Subject: Re: Cuba: Critical mass?
Seems a dissonance there. They want a complete change to the autocratic regime in Cuba, but are staunch supporters of the autocratic regime here?? Odd.

If I could channel what I think their response would be: having experienced a true autocratic regime, they know better than to call what's going on in the United States an autocracy. Yes, the country is definitely getting more illiberal. But movement towards illiberalism is not the same as what people experience in actual autocracies.

That's why there's no dissonance. Even the more reasonable of my republican-leaning relatives by marriage (and some are quite unreasonable) were actually put off by Democratic claims that defeating Trump was necessary to protect democracy, or that we're becoming a fascist country. To them, such claims diminish the weight of, and show a true lack of understanding of, what actual authoritarianism is like.