I'll respond to this one, as it's at the top and it started off unpleasantly personal. Do try and avoid making assumptions about the person you're speaking to, please.

I live in a post-Soviet country taking an autocratic turn, I have friends fleeing. I will probably have to leave myself and it's making me miserable. I do not mean to diminish their experience or the experience of anyone suffering under an authoritarian government.

If you'll read the context of the post, I was talking about how Western (predominately US) media portrays other countries, which is frankly dehumanizing for the most part.

I grew up thinking that war starts, life stops; that a different form of government radically and instantly transmogrifies every aspect of a society. We are a peaceful, normal, democratic society and everywhere else is war or repression. A primitive dualism which has not stood up to my experience.

This is what's implied in the news and the movies, and forms a basis for the acceptance of the Western versions of the shared problems I discussed. It is often exaggerated in a way that lines places up for a bomb-driven democratization process.

It also means that, as GP noted, we don't feel the problems coming along when they do.

Do you get where I'm coming from?

It doesn't matter to these people. They are so drunk on their feelings of superiority that they'll dismiss anyone with first-hand experience as an "apologist", a "foreigner" or whatever. They need to perform these mental gymnastics because they've been told all their life that "liberal democracy" is perfect, and anyone who challenges this notion is somehow deficient. To even consider a different point of view would bring their entire worldview crashing down, and so they will twist and turn your every word against you.