In the EU, money gets stolen from you in a more subtle way. For example, the COVID situation, with unlimited money-printing was a tax on the people who had savings, and supporting a specific subset of the economy, or, delaying the tax in the essence.

There is no lesson of "democracy" to give. At best it is a guided democracy, and this is very generous.

For example, VPNs are going to be forbidden, and the free speech compared to the US is a little toy.

Elections are often a facade in many EU countries.

In France for example, it's always the "right" (btw you can be socially or jailed if you support them by using the wrong words) against the existing party, and communists are begging it's better to vote for the existing party, than support the newcomers.

It's a loop, this is why there is this joke that voters are "beavers", because at every elections they are asked "build a dam" against competition.

There is the same beaver thing, over and over again for 30 years.

Even people that are actually elected you have nowhere your word near their decisions (and even less near Von der Leyen and similar people).

Poland understood long time ago that it needs a safe country, and that they need to make sure that the people in their country are fine and safe before helping the whole planet.

Hungary and Poland are a little bit in the same boat, their relative independence saves them (e.g. refusing the EUR currency, refusing some policies) that allows them to have more leeway to support the local people, while benefiting of the funds from the EU and Schengen.

The EU prevents your money from being stolen, except when the EU itself decides to withhold or deduct it. Hungary has lost over a billion euros in ECJ daily fines...

If you push it even further, this is forgetting about the hundreds of billions that are centrally distributed to third-parties (and this is just Ukraine!). So, your money, our decision.