Why did authoritarian countries decline democracy为什么集权国家拒绝了民主的橄榄枝
琥珀风筝 陌上美国My friend asked a question:
(被朋友问了这么一个问题)
“I do not understand why, after Stalin, Russia allowed Putin to become a dictator; nor why China, after Mao, allowed Xi to become one.
Both countries were invited with open arms to join the Democracies of the world – and both declined.”
Translate: “不理解为什么斯大林之后，俄罗斯让普金上台，成为新的独裁者。(大家都懂的原因，后面那句我马赛克处理，也都很容易猜到内容。)
两个国家都被民主社会抛过橄榄枝，都拒绝了。”
(中文翻译见第二部分)
It is a large topic, let me try to share some of my views.
The authoritarian system has succeeded in several things. First, they have managed to make their top 10-20% - politician/elite/rich/powerful classes, i.e. those who have the most sources to bring a revolution or turn the system upside down, believe that the direction of the country will be more open/outward/domacractic/free and the current non-free phase is just temporary and necessary "sacrifice/endurance" to a better future. It is not urgent for these people to make change. Freedom is a privilege/specific interest in authoritarian countries, however, the culture there turns it as a motivation to make people want to climb the social economical ladder achieving individual and or specific interest group's success, rather than fight for the general public's freedom and equal rights. Of course we can always find individuals contradictory to this, however, I talk about statistics here.
Second, the system has used nationalism/tribalism to make the bottom 20-30% believe that democracy is a western branded thing, therefore, it is like a "culture invasion". If they adopt it, it is a treason to their ancestors and traditions. They also fear that there would be a war going through the whole process - changing from the current system to a democratic system. As long as the current life is still tolerable, not enough people would be interested in taking risks. These BS and fear mongering propaganda indeed work well.
Third, the authoritarian system is a pipeline, there is not only one dictator kind of person, but tens of millions of them. They control (or want to control) people all the time in daily life, work, school, home, sports, internet, everywhere.
Fourth, the high pressure and propaganda machine in an authoritarian system have effectively destroyed people's independent thinking and viewpoint diversity. It makes a huge amount of people view the world either black or white. Even if all of a sudden people get the right to vote, there is a high risk they would vote for a new dictator. That's one of the reasons why regime change wars have failed in many countries. It takes time to practice and build a healthy democratic system. Democracy is still a very new culture, society and political phenomenon compared to the entire human history. If we look at evolution, a hundred years is too short compared to homo sapiens' whole evolving time. 99.999% of human history is under dictatorship. We are basically fighting hundreds of thousands of years of human history. It is similar to the case that we all know high salty foods such as pickles are not healthy, however, people still cannot resist those foods due to our long history of starving. Even the modern democratic system has not been accomplished in one day. It had budded thousands of years ago in ancient Greece and Rome, and in the recent century there were still mistakes such as the German people electing Hitler.
Last but not least, we often believe transforming from an authoritarian system to a democratic system is moving up the social/ political food chain. I personally believe so. However, it could be a process of hundreds and even thousand years in some countries. For a generation's length of time, it is more practical to treat non-free society and free society as "diversity" of political/social systems. In other words, let's stay away from their own troubles but focus on strengthening America's own freedom and democracy first. For instance, there are generally two types of species that can thrive on an island. One is birds with strong wings and muscles, the other is insects without wings or half-wing. Should we install birds' strong wings to insects?
BTW, my understanding of the USA is not a democracy but a Republic, which is another big topic, to make it simple please refer to the attached image.
That's my two cents.
我用英文回复了（见第二部分），这是对应的中文。
这是一个很大的话题，让我来尝试浅谈一些个人观点。
集权体制成功办到了一些事。
首先，他们设法让社会顶层的10-20%的人——政治人物/精英/有权有势/富有的阶层，即那些拥有最多资源有能力带来革命甚至颠覆制度的人，相信国家的方向将是更加开放/开通/民主/自由，而当前的非自由阶段只是暂时的和必要的“牺牲/忍受”，为实现更美好的未来做准备的过渡阶段。因此，这些人没有做出改变的紧迫感。
自由在集权/威权国家，变成了是一种个人或者特权利益集团可以享受到的“特权”，然而，这些地方的文化，将这种情况甚至其变成一种动力，驱动人们去攀登社会经济阶梯，取得个人成功，却缺乏为广泛的公众自由和平等权利而战的精神。当然，我们总能找到不符合这种总结的个人（行为），但是，我这里更多是从统计层面来谈这个问题。
其次，该制度利用了民族主义/部落主义，使底层20-30%的人认为，民主只是一种西方品牌的产品，因此，推广它就像是搞“文化入侵”。如果采用了这种制度，这是对自己先辈和传统的“背叛”。而且，他们还相当担心整个过程需要发生一场战争才能实现——即完成从现行制度转变为民主制度。所以，只要现在的生活还可以忍受，就没什么人感兴趣冒险。这些BS和宣传确实起到了维稳效果。
第三，集权像一个生产流水线一般，独裁者（思维的）不止一个，而是千千万万。他们无时无刻不在控制着或者至少琢磨着如何控制人们的日常生活，在工作、学校、家庭、运动、互联网，等等，无处不在。
第四，集权体制下的高压和宣传机器，有效地破坏了人的独立思考能力和观点多样性。它使大量的人非黑即白地看待世界。即使突然之间人们获得了投票权，也很有可能投票出来一个新的独裁者。这就是许多国家的政权更迭战争失败的原因之一。
实践和建立健康的民主制度需要时间。与整个人类历史相比，民主仍然是一个非常新的政治、文化和社会现象。如果我们以进化论的眼光去看，与人类的整个进化时间轴相比，一百年太短了。相比之下，99.999%的人类历史都处于独裁统治之下。热爱自由的人，基本上是在与漫长的几十万年的人类历史作斗争。就像我们都知道咸菜等高盐食物不健康，但由于人类绝大部分时候处于挨饿的历史，人们仍然无法抗拒这些食物。
即使是现代民主制度也不是一天建成的。它早在几千年前的古希腊和古罗马就萌芽了，近一个世纪仍然在磕磕碰碰中前行发展，也存在缺陷甚至重大失误，比如德国人选出来希特勒这样的错误。
最后想说，我们通常认为，从专制制度向民主制度的转变，是社会/政治制度往上游进步移动的趋势。我个人就是这么认为的。然而，在某些国家，这可能是一个需要数百年甚至千年的过程。在一代人的时间里，用实际的眼光看待现状，把非自由社会和自由社会视为政治/社会制度的“多样性”，更容易获得心情的平静。换句话说，让我们远离那些千年专制历史的国家地区的麻烦，首先专注于加强美国自己的自由和民主吧。这就像，通常有两种类型的物种可以在海岛上繁衍生息。一种是有强壮翅膀和肌肉的鸟类，另一种是没有翅膀或半翅的昆虫。我们应该为昆虫安装鸟类强大的翅膀吗？
顺便说一句，我对美国的理解不是民主制而是共和制，详细请参看🔗感谢联邦制度，使我们能因地制宜，避免灾难。这是一个更大的话题，简单总结一下的话，请参考这个附图。
以上属于我的两分钱看法。
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前文/视频回顾：
38年前今天里根在复旦大学演讲，此刻回味几多伤感—我们还回得去吗(字幕)