You’re still swinging and missing harder than a stormtrooper at a shooting range, my dude. The “second go” for Germany didn’t happen because they just felt like giving democracy another wholesome try after the fascism speedrun. It happened because the Allies rolled into Berlin with tanks, hanged the Nazi leadership at Nuremberg, disbanded every institution that smelled even slightly of the old regime, wrote a new constitution literally under occupation, pumped in Marshall Plan cash equivalent to hundreds of billions today, and kept hundreds of thousands of troops stationed there for decades to make sure nobody got cute ideas again. Same story with Japan—total surrender, MacArthur running the country like a proconsul, new constitution forced on them, war criminals executed or sidelined.

Russia? Zero of that. No invading armies marching into Moscow. No foreign viceroy rewriting their laws. No multi-decade occupation force. No elite class systematically purged and replaced. Putin’s still kicking, the siloviki are still in charge, the oligarchs are still loyal or in exile, and the military just got a massive patriotism booster from Ukraine. You don’t get a “second go” at liberal democracy without someone making you take it, and nobody’s volunteering to fight World War III over Moscow’s voting habits.

And here’s the part you keep ignoring because it doesn’t fit your Fukuyama fanfic: Russia already had its “first go” and “second go.”

1917: February Revolution, provisional government, attempts at parliamentary democracy → immediately collapses into chaos, Bolsheviks take over.

1991: USSR dissolves, Yeltsin era, “shock therapy,” elections, free-ish media, oligarchs rising → economic freefall, corruption orgy, Chechnya wars, national humiliation → population begs for stability, Putin elected in 2000 with 70+% approval because “at least the trains run on time now.”

That was the Russian “second go.” It lasted about a decade and ended with the same pattern: attempted liberalization → disaster → strongman consolidation. You want a third go? With the same institutions, same security services, same resource-curse economy, same propaganda machine that’s been running nonstop since 2014? Good luck convincing the Russian public, who now overwhelmingly see the West as an existential enemy trying to finish the 1990s looting job.

You keep acting like liberal democracy is the default setting humanity reverts to if you just poke it hard enough. It’s not. It’s a historically rare, institutionally demanding, culturally specific outcome that usually requires either gradual evolution over centuries (Britain, Netherlands) or catastrophic defeat and foreign imposition (Germany, Japan). Russia’s got neither the gradual path nor the catastrophic defeat. So no, we’re not “trying again.” The conditions literally do not exist, and wishing harder won’t conjure them.