The Army trained me to fight communists. I never thought when I got old the communists would be us.

The West is an oligarchy. What exact system they use is not important to them as long as they maintain and expand their power. They use the communists as part of their supporter base because if some one believes in communism, they lack the cognitive ability to perceive rational thoughts and therefore will believe anything. This makes them easy to control.

Their current target system appears to be a hybrid between communism and fascism. They want independent corporations but controlled by the government, like fascism. However, they want to do away with culture, religion, and patriotism, and replace these all with their latest flavor of social justice. This is more reminiscent of communism. The trans gender part of their current system of beliefs is a religious tests (among other things). No sane person would ever call a man a woman and vice versa. As a result, if anyone does agree with that part of their ideology, it is clear that it is because they have radically bought into that belief system and it is unlikely that they came up with it on their own as it is so insane.

They seemed to have used this CCP virus to further their push by consolidating control in the government and testing how far beyond the law they can exercise their power. In Canada, it appears that they don't need to follow the law at all as they can ignore both the law and the will of the people. Australia seems to be in the same boat. However, more importantly, they have used the CCP virus to attempt to destroy small businesses. That's what the lockdowns were always about and that's why big businesses like Walmart and Amazon were allowed to stay open while they intentionally shutdown smaller ones. This is more reminiscent of communism where they need a giant consolidated business to be able to control the economy. Small businesses are a major threat to any communist like system as they cannot be properly controlled.

Make no mistake, Russia is also an oligarchy. However, as time passes, and the west gets worse with respect to freedom with Russia staying about the same, there may come a point where Russia will be more free than the majority of countries in the west. It probably is more free than a few at the moment. One thing that Russia has going for it is it's pushing patriotism as it's binding cultural idea and not this insanity of social justice. In addition to that, they are not trying to stamp out religion and culture with the west is moving in that direction. Also, while not entirely transparent, it is far easier to tell who is in charge in Russia than the West. The fact that in the so-called free west, we don't actually know who is running the show should be a wake up call. That means that this information is being intentionally hidden from us and you can bet it's not for benign reasons.

I went through this exact same conversation with another engineer today. It's unbelievable how dumb Americans have become. The last facial expression and statement is eerily exact.

Wait; so, we are the baddies? ha ha All is possible in Clown World!

Not even that. It's a mixture: Fasci-Socio-Communo Authoritarianism.