On Sunday, Vladimir Putin was re-elected as Russia’s president with almost 77 percent of the vote. With his relentlessly propagandized image at home, Putin would have won a free election, but that wouldn’t have been enough: He feels the need of an unassailable mandate, of recognition as his country’s savior. So serious opposition candidates were excluded (and one murdered), while ballot box stuffing was shameless. Czars are just that way.

Days earlier, China’s President Xi Jinping engineered his lifetime tenure (he didn’t bother with the charade of a nationwide vote). Xi’s the most powerful leader China has had since Mao in his heyday, and Mao cost China tens of millions of lives.

In NATO member Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a would-be sultan, has dismantled the constitution; jailed tens of thousands of opposition members; staged massive show trials; destroyed freedom of the press; attacked minorities; empowered religious fanatics; and, now, invaded Syria not to defeat the remnants of ISIS, but to crush our Kurdish allies.

In Egypt, where democracy came and went in a blink, President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi rules ruthlessly, while Syria’s Bashar al-Assad has survived every prediction of his fall. In Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, unelected, remains the undisputed ruler. Even Kim Jong Un, a tin-pot despot, has gained international recognition at a level his predecessors never achieved.

In NATO and European Union members Hungary and the Czech Republic, strongmen dominate the political scene. Romania and Slovakia struggle to maintain democratic forms, and even Poland has seen its constitution undermined. Corruption, tyranny’s handmaiden, is everywhere. In Italy and France, pro-Putin, neo-fascist parties are political forces to be reckoned with, while Moscow also backs far-right parties in Germany and Austria.

Tyrants may oppress you. They may lead you into disastrous wars. But they don’t demand that you take personal responsibility, that great burden of democracy. And every tyrant worth his salt provides scapegoats for his people’s failures: It’s never your fault, it’s them. It’s a message demagogues promote even here. Tyrants offer certainty. All you have to do is let them run things. It’s a deal too many humans gladly embrace.

Meanwhile, freedom means insecurity, and democracy signals chaos to unprepared societies. As we’ve seen for almost three decades now, the sudden imposition of democratic forms on traditional societies is like handing a child a grenade.