The current Ukraine crisis...

[tadeus]

There are really substantially different ideologies?


Or only different forms of totalitarianism?

Well, from my perspective, considering we live on a mixed polarity planet, both systems can (and are) exploited for self gain, but democracy has just a few more checks and balances in place that ensure a better chance for average people to have inalienable rights that afford them some safety and security.

Remember this is planet Earth, messy business indeed.... which is why I like Churchill's quote about democracy... full of cynicism, but so far the best we have.

Just have a look at the definition:

Democracy

• a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
  
• a political unit that has a democratic government
  

vest

• to grant or endow with a particular authority, right, or property
  
• to place or give into the possession or discretion of some person or authority especially : to give to a person a legally fixed immediate right of present or future enjoyment of (such as an estate)
  

people

• the members of a family or kinship
  
• the mass of a community as distinguished from a special class
  
• a body of persons that are united by a common culture, tradition, or sense of kinship, that typically have common language, institutions, and beliefs, and that often constitute a politically organized group
  

Supreme power ist vested into a community as distinguished from a special class - let us call it Elite.

That has nothing to do with natural rights or self-responsibility as sovereign.