I'm posting this quote because my ex-father-in-law-in-spe always bragged about how "fine" GDR has been. He wanted to have the iron curtain back. Stuff like that. Sadly nowadays, I can't laugh about his nostalgia anymore.
Seemingly all the "bad" stuff that was implemented in GDR (mass-surveillance, faked elections, propaganda, incarceration for political reasons...) we have now in western "democracies".
But as an added bonus, we seemingly also have all the "bad" stuff that always was criticized from the Eastern side of this curtain:
Endless waging of war for no reasonable reasons whatsoever, free-running inflation, no jobs for the "masses", an abundance of stuff nobody actually needs and over boarding consumerism as state-religion.
It isn't nearly as "funny" anymore to live nowadays, as it has been before 9/11.
On which side of these curtains dividing the world also seems to matter only to lesser extends.
Authoritarian as way seems to be the only possible direction. No matter where you look on this globe right now.
there doesn't seem to be anything here