Right, take the Roman Empire. They became authoritarian, despite having a super cool republic to start with. Once the bad people come to power, they put in plac

Right, take the Roman Empire. They became authoritarian, despite having a super cool republic to start with. Once the bad people come to power, they put in place the totalitarian stuff as-needed. They don’t need the stuff to already be in place. We are kidding ourselves to pretend we can prevent tyrants from coming to power now that we’ve seen the kind of ethics the voting public will accept, and encourage, and attempt to re-elect.