(#5664) The struggle for democracy is not just in the United States

      We here in the United States of America are about to have an election in 3 months on November 5th 2024. The central, or core, question is whether we want to either let our democracy slip into a theocratic/authoritarian dystopia or defeat those forces and keep our democracy intact. The republican party is backing the dystopia while we democrats are fighting to preserve democracy. I use the term fighting figuratively when in comparison to Ukraine who is literally fighting for their lives every day for their right to choose their own form of government that is also preserving their democracy. Even the fighting in the form of protesting like in Venezuela is much more physical than the fighting we do here in the USA.
     Yet whether physically fighting or mentally fighting the fight, it is still active and real. In Ukraine the Russian led effort by putin to eliminate a cultural people from the face of the planet is akin to exactly what genocide defines. The Russian people are afraid of democracy even though they would benefit from it. Their leader putin, the former kgb agent, has them full of propaganda to in essence harm their own interests. You can see that with over 580,000 dead Russian soldiers in Ukraine and still no outcry from the parents, wives, and children of those needlessly dead Russian soldiers. That one man backed by the kremlin can have such a deadly impact on so many people is abhorrent and should be stopped at all costs. With Venezuela the situation is as dire to democracy as it is to Ukraine.
     Venezuela had a fair vote but the lie at the final tally is not fair. When the opposition had twice the lead at the end of the incumbent, but the incumbent declares himself the victor, democracy is turned on its head. We here in the USA are girding for some trickery by the republican party to do something similar when our voting is done. Democracy is under attack from various sources so being vigilant and forthright about the deceptions that are happening or will happen is our duty in order for democracy to prevail in the end. With Ukraine the tyrant putin must not be given any dispensation, he must be given justice. For maduro in Venezuela, he as well must not be rewarded for lying and stealing and instead must be brought to justice through whatever it takes to remove him from power.