Brits insist they’re a democracy, don’t they? They’re included in the “Democratic west vs authoritarian east” rhetoric. Weird how the goalpost shifts when your side is transparently coming out worse.

The dictators that the USA supports are people who don’t have popular support or a pre-existing legal framework they derive their power from. They are governors working as proxies for the USA, deriving their authority from the USAs guns. It doesn’t just mean people you don’t like. Russia’s “democracy” is as legitimate as most European liberal democracies. The DPRK has never propped up a dictator, they don’t have the power to.

Pretty sure that’s a taxi.