By then the opposition will have been renditioned to black holes or killed.

The current opposition maybe. No empire/government/strongman lasts forever.

Russia has been a basket case for the better part of the last 1,000 years.

History sucked for a very long time. It is not a natural law that things will just get better.

	▲	lazide 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but it is a natural law that the specific strongman in charge dies eventually. So far at least. Every tsar was different, Stalin and Lenin had their own flavors, etc. Sure it may suck, but the flavor does change? And that is something!