Yes, it really is a bad thing. All dictatorships suck except for a narrow class of people favored by or directly benefiting from the regime. Period. Any other view is either cope or Orientalism (“maybe democracy doesn’t work for X people”).
Sometimes it takes the subjects of a dictatorship multiple generations to realize that dictatorships suck, especially if they are partisans and their dictator is a “hero” fighting their boogeyman (secular dictator fighting religious boogeyman, religious dictator fighting secular boogeyman, chauvinist dictator pretending to fight some other country like in 1984 but really the biggest enemy is him, a minority dictator pretending to protect the minorities as an excuse for carpet bombing and torturing members of the majority to hold onto power, etc…).
Keep in mind that for long lasting dictatorships, half the population or more was raised on their propaganda. They’re literally brainwashed, and the dictator ensures that no one becomes independently successful enough to challenge their authority, so people often have nothing better to do that sit around, smoke, and talk about the regime’s enemies as if they’re the proximate threat. So don’t blindly accept when someone from a country with a dictatorship says their dictatorship is good. Trust me, you have it beyond good in America , you truly have no idea how bad a bad government is.
> All dictatorships suck except for a narrow class of people favored by or directly benefiting from the regime
And even they can fall out of favor and become victims in an instant. You only need to say the wrong thing or have someone report that you said the wrong thing (whether or not you did) and the party's over.
Sometimes it takes the subjects of a dictatorship multiple generations to realize that dictatorships suck, especially if they are partisans and their dictator is a “hero” fighting their boogeyman (secular dictator fighting religious boogeyman, religious dictator fighting secular boogeyman, chauvinist dictator pretending to fight some other country like in 1984 but really the biggest enemy is him, a minority dictator pretending to protect the minorities as an excuse for carpet bombing and torturing members of the majority to hold onto power, etc…).
Keep in mind that for long lasting dictatorships, half the population or more was raised on their propaganda. They’re literally brainwashed, and the dictator ensures that no one becomes independently successful enough to challenge their authority, so people often have nothing better to do that sit around, smoke, and talk about the regime’s enemies as if they’re the proximate threat. So don’t blindly accept when someone from a country with a dictatorship says their dictatorship is good. Trust me, you have it beyond good in America , you truly have no idea how bad a bad government is.