those were the days

 I am certainly not confusing Belarus with Poland.  Belarus's current head is very, very, bad.  Andrzej Buda is merely pretty bad.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrzej_Duda

On 28 December 2015, Duda signed the Constitutional Tribunal bill (passed on 22 December 2015 by the Sejm), which unequivocally breaches the Constitution of Poland according to the National Council of the Judiciary of Poland,^[38] the Public Prosecutor General^[39] and the Polish Ombudsman.^[40]

In June 2016, Duda rejected appointing 10 judges selected by the National Council of the Judiciary of Poland.

In February 2018, Duda said that he would sign into law Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, making it illegal to accuse 'the Polish nation' of complicity in the Holocaust and other Nazi German atrocities.

On paper I suppose you could call Poland a representative democracy.  Andrzej was elected by a narrow margin, but once he was elected he has shown contempt for the constitution, not unlike, dare I say it, Donald Trump.  I expect Beagles might draw the line on the holocaust, but otherwise he probably likes most of the other stuff especially his behavior towards the LBGTQ crowd and on immigration.

I was going through the wiki looking for stuff that I thought would put the guy in a bad light, but then it occurred to me that most of the stuff that repelled me, would please Beagles.  He is Beagles's kind of guy.  I remember he used to refer to himself as a reactionary, which he later rejected, I don't remember why.  But wait, I typed reactionary into that search bar and here it is.  http://talkswithbeagles.blogspot.com/2019/04/beagles-reactionary.html

He said that he was a reactionary in matters like gay rights, but he wanted to keep civil rights as long as they did not give minorities more rights than straight white people.  I would say that basically what they want is the same rights that Beagles has.  

These political labels change all the time. I don't know of anybody else who thinks fascists and commies are the same thing.  Teddy was a progressive.  The republican party was progressive until Nixon adopted the southern strategy.  The conservatives trashed the name, and I think it was cowardly but rather than defending it the dems just stopped calling themselves liberals and now use the term progressive.

I just wanted to paint a picture of domestic bliss. with the image of Beagles stepping in to peel the potatoes to illustrate the point that the legalization of gay marriage did not trash Beagles' marriage as he had said it would.

I've never eaten at the Orange Garden.  What appealed to me about it was the way it looked, which was the way most Chinese restaurants looked back in the days when I worked at the House of Chin which had all the same gimcracky Chinese decor which you could buy from a catalogue, and those same dishes, Oriental Plate (fried rice, an egg roll, maybe some wontons), a pot of tea and a fortune cookie.

The kind of place where we could put a quarter in the jukebox, and play that song that in our youthful wisdom we knew would never be us.

… Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way