How did it feel, seeing the dictatorships collapse and look at the newspaper and see good news?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco 1975
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution 1974
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship_in_Brazil 1985
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Korea#Sixth_Republic_(1987–present) 1988
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reorganization_Process 1983
Major optimism, like everyone was breathing a big sigh of relief.
Bit naive perhaps, but there you are.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
That said, it’s still much better today, just that power brokers never change - they just always look for the new way to sell the same old ideas.
The Hapsburgs didn’t go away, they just changed team jerseys so people wouldn’t realize it was still them.
Kind of puts into perspective civilizations ending from climate change in a century vs in 30 minutes. By the time we would have learned about world ending nuclear war, we’d already have ended. For climate change there’s still hope we will do something