Seriously, I am having an emotional and mental breakdown

[Fil1957]

91. One thing often overlooked is the cultural aspect. When looking at authoritarian systems past and present, there are

strong cultural underpinnings for authoritarianism. For example, Putin in Russia. They call him "President", but for all practical purposes he is Czar, just as Russia has had for hundreds of years. And that authoritarian culture is one of the reasons why liberal democracy didn't "take" in the 1990s in Russia.

Same with China. President Xi Jinping has all the powers of an emperor, as China has been ruled by emperors for thousands of years.

When Hitler came to power in the early 1930s, Germany had been a democracy for only a few years, so a democratic system did not have enough time to become embedded in German culture at that time.

The United States is different. We have had democracy and human rights in some form for hundreds of years. Part of that came from the native Americans particularly the Iroquois Nation, and part of it came from England dating back to 1215 and Magna Carta. It has been with us so long that it has become firmly embedded in our culture.

Therefore it will be much harder for authoritarianism to take hold here than in other places. We are already seeing quite a bit of push back (not enough in my mind) and I believe we'll see a lot more in the future.

For that reason and others, I believe we will defeat project 2025, and remain a free society, but expect the next few years to be turbulent, so don't get discouraged.