There’s no way to know the dictator is good, and most people are pretty selfish, especially power seekers.
They may be so full of shit, so effective at duping people, they may have duped themselves into believing they’re actually good, not knowing they’re bad until after they’ve been in power for a while, and finally have the opportunity to do bad without consequence.
It’s a huge risk to take.
A bad dictator will surround himself with bad men who won’t rebel against him unless he becomes crazy or stupid.
It’s unlikely a dictator will write a constitution, I mean what dictator bothers to write one after he has taken over the army and used it to crush the democracy and override the existing constitution, and even if he does, in all likelihood it’ll be written in such a way so as to make it easy for him at least and his generals to circumvent, altho his minions may be subject to it.
In a democracy, the constitution doesn’t just protect you from the prime minister himself, it also protects you from the military and the police.
In a dictatorship (or a democracy), the military and police are somewhat indepenent of the dictator (or the prime minister).
He can’t micromanage, he has to delegate and delegate, and so even if he’s great, in absence of a (strong) constitution, the military and police will often abuse the people.
A dictatorship is harder to physically rebel against, as the people will in all likelihood, immediately or incrementally be disarmed, and while in a democracy, the prime minister can sometimes dupe the people into thinking their oppressive conditions are what they voted for, by rigging elections, or him claiming: you voted for me because you wanted this, when they really voted for him because they wanted that, at least the people in a democracy have access to education and independent media, even if they often fail to utilize it.
While there probably is some election fraud, I mean who knows, maybe Hillary won and Donald lost, I seriously doubt most people actually voted for a third party like the Greens or Libertarians, or for an independent.
If most people did, I think the press would be hard pressed to trick them into thinking otherwise.
People have family, friends and neighbors, they ask them who they voted for, and if almost everyone was saying Greens, Libertarians and/or independents, quickly it’d become apparent they’ve been had, and a revolution would ensue.
So while voting can be rigged on a small scale, I think there’s a limit to how much, and when the people are really primed for revolution, it can happen at the voting booth.
We might not get everything we want, but at least we should be able to sway things more in our direction: nationalism, socialism, and for me, environmentalism as well.
