"If Kristof does not believe me - then perhaps he will believe his own publication home. New York Times, back in 2014, called South Sudan 'in many ways an American creation, carved out of war-torn Sudan in a referendum largely orchestrated by the United States, its fragile institutions nurtured with billions of dollars in American aid.'"

This article took three days to research and write. And the horrifying thing is - this pattern repeats for many African countries. USAID attempted to install a democracy; it failed; China reaps the spoils.

My latest.

Here's how this unironically works.

The classical definition of pluralism is a democratic state that allows multiple parties to run for office.

But that's not how Western political scientists see it.

They see pluralism as a holistic set of public-private relationships that keep each other in check. For instance, a media outlet might be fact-checked by a public NGO.

Institutionally, this creates an ideologically narrow, conformist class as credentialism increasingly originates from whoever is educated by the "right" universities and professors.

That is why they can say with a straight face that truly independent media like @timcast or Joe Rogan are authoritarian - because they've found a way to gain credibility outside of this system of mutual-ideological-policing.

And because this so-called "pluralism" is dependent on government and nonprofit dollars alike, and also unfalsifiable (every pushback is a justification to double down on defeating misinformation), you get nonsensical end results such as this one.