That's hilarious, especially now that formerly democratic countries that formerly had free speech can't be trusted anymore, either.

Well its not a simple story. For example, your body and mind are built on top of non democratic society of a few trillion cells. Why trust it?

Freedom of speech and liberal democracies are not magic because there are blind spots to how they emerge (on the back of slavery/invasions/looting/repression etc)

How to make suggestions about development to anyone else if that has been the route to development in the first place?

Western Philosophers recognize and talk about this all the time. But ironically talking about it freely hasn't made any diff because the solutions are very uncomfortable to democractic societies - https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-violent-exhaustion...

If you travel a lot, you end up realizing that every culture/country/society has a taboo topic or topics that will censor and/or get you in trouble for talking about. You also realize that usually the strength of any culture is also its weakness.