I’m not arguing that any system guarantees freedom, or that corruption doesn’t exist in democracies—it does.

What matters is lived reality: whether people can speak, organize, and resist power without being erased for it. Autocracy doesn’t remove corruption; it removes the ability to confront it.

Camus once framed the tension clearly: when forced to choose between abstract justice and living freedom, he chose the freedom that allows one to stand against injustice. Without that freedom, justice is just a word enforced by power.

That’s the line Iranians are fighting over—not perfection, but the right to challenge authority without death as the answer.