Sure, that follows. In an environment where the US-american public would be immune to someone who can rack up 100 lies in 5 minutes, someone like Trump would no

Sure, that follows. In an environment where the US-american public would be immune to someone who can rack up 100 lies in 5 minutes, someone like Trump would not have followers. So an individual can influence history as much as the environment permits. On the other hand, people are forming that environment and again and again there are specific situations where a single person seemed to change the course of history. Does that count as paradox? I always found that part of historical perspectives fascinating. > The mystery is just how those people maintain the cognitive dissonance of being "pro speech" and "pro democracy" when they've tuned out everything else and are just focused on power in what they perceive as a war... Yes, that is a fascinating mystery. But one has to keep in mind: Many of the people that just tried a coup today and effectively tried to dismantle the democratic system in the US by installing a dictator will think of themselves as defenders of democracy. There will be of course hard right wing nationalist terrorists in that crowd - the last pro-trump protests have shown that - but there can only be so many of those.