Imagine a country in which the current president has shut down opposition media and indicted his two chief rivals for the presidency on charges of treason. Imagine that one of those rivals is under house arrest and that all his property has been decreed forfeit. Imagine that the other (who has so far avoided arrest) is the current president's predecessor, who himself came to power in the aftermath of a coup that ended with his predecessor fleeing the country. Imagine that one of this country's major administrative units recently had as its governor another country's former president, a man who had fled the homeland he had served as president and whose term as governor in this his adopted country was interrupted by a period of statelessness, his citizenship having been revoked both by his own homeland and by the country he now served as governor. Imagine being told that this country is a beacon of democracy in its region and that America must come to its aid in its dispute with the nuclear power with which it shares a common culture and hundreds of years of common governance . . .
