Say what you mean, and mean what you say.

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Spokesperson for Biden just said that a vote in Congress against the funding of military aid to Ukraine will “hurt democracy and help dictators”.

As context, I favor supporting Ukraine and favor a yea vote. I also think it’s true that in many way the U.S. tends, all things being equal, to favor democracy and participatory government and distribution of power to the people, abroad.

Sort of. And it a great democratic experiment and has been an example to the world.

But still, those particular words from Jake Sullivan really strike me as disingenuous, or else a bad basis for making an appeal.

It’s no secret that when it’s not “all things being equal”, the U.S. frequently has sided with tyrants, dictators, autocrats, unassailable hereditary monarchs, and other people and government and nations that are not exactly beacons of democracy, and avoidance of helping dictators.

If we really mean that, we should really do that. If we don’t mean that — because we sometimes think our self-interest justifies it, or there is a greater good served, or there is a local in-country good served, or we respect that in some sense the people have indeed chosen that type of government — then it just grates when we self-serving appeal to Americans as if it’s otherwise, and it causes genuine confusion, the appearance of hypocrisy, and moves to separate the population from the truth of our official policies (which, ironically, is itself antidemocratic).