I’m sure some of it is plain lies people have been told that they’ve internalized, but it really appears sometimes like USians tend to be so used to having shitty shit shit shit for leaders, they have trouble conceptualizing the idea of people collectively liking their leaders and wanting more like them. It’s like people’s heads have been put on backwards. They think that the polarizing nature of many “liberal democracy [for the rich]” leaders means democracy is working and the often-liked nature of many anti-imperialist or socialist countries means it must be tyranny and the people secretly hate them. The idea that democracy could actually work and not be full of hateful mudslinging of one political party to another is out of the question.