Craig, you must be kidding. The "Biden Crime Family" is a real thing. Biden is one corrupt SOB who has valiamtly fought for his REAL constituency (Corporate America and the banks) all his life. He was a Senator from Delaware, which is a tiny state that exists only because it is absolute tax heaven for corporations. Biden's home state - the one he represented for 40 years in the Senate - IS HOME TO MORE CORPORATIONS THAN PEOPLE. Biden was nicknamed "The Senator from MBNA" (a huge credit card bank company).

Since 1970, the US government and especially its leaders has not represented or served the people. I cannot believe that you are so naive to say that we live "under a democracy". Sorry, Craig, but American society is not a democracy, in fact it is a fascist oligarchy in the most pure, strictest definition - meaning it is a fusion of corporate power with government. But It is also what Chris Hedges calls an "inverted totalitarian state" in which the corporations tell the government what to do, rather than the other way around (as it was with Mussolini and Hitler).

I am happy to have a debate and press my point that, despite being "autocratic strongmen", leaders like Putin, Xi and Orban are actually MORE responsive to the people, because they rely directly on the people for their support.

In places like the US and the West, it is not democratic, because the leaders are chosen by the elites and the institutions of the "permanent state".

Look at Rishi Sunak: he is PM in the UK but has never won an election in his life. Look at Ursula Von der Leyen: she is President of the EU but no one has ever cast a single vote for her.

Look at my country, the US. How can a "democracy" end up giving us the same candidates as last time around, especially when they are both old and proven corrupt?

I would bet serious money that all your students are too young to remember how bad things were when Putin took power in 2000. How the life expectancy for Russian males had plummeted by 7 years under Yeltsin; how the Western financiers and corporatists had "raped" the Russian economy and partnered with corrupt oligarchs to rob Russia of its wealth.

I bet your students were babies during those brutal years of the 1990's - or perhaps not even born yet.

I would invite you - and your students - to read my article:

"Why Putin is a Hero to Russians"

- where I make the case that for Russia, Putin is a cross between JFK and FDR. I would welcome all manner of comments and counter-arguments.

I am in my mid-60's and I have seen enough to know that being a good person is not a qualifier for leadership of a nation.

I think it is cutely - but also dangerously - naive to think that a leader has to be "a good man". JFK and FDR were both noted philanderers, but they were great Presidents.

The President who was the most "good" was Jimmy Carter, who was a Navy veteran and a Baptist pastor — a true “man of God” — who taught Sunday school and built low cost homes for "Habitat for Humanity". He was a saint. But he is also universally acknowledged by Americans to be THE WORST President we ever had.

LBJ was a self-described "son of a bitch" who was himself racist, but he enacted the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Act, Medicare and other programs that really helped people of colour, old people and all Americans in general.

George W. Bush won his election because people thought "he would be the person they would most like to sit and have a beer with", whereas Al Gore was to “stiff and wooden”.

Well, I hope you are old enough to remember just how bad Bush was - illegal Iraq War, torture program. Guantanamo, etc.

Nope. Sorry, but give me a Putin any day.