Reply #23: i don't believe this is true

[amazona]

When the Caesars put an end to the Republic, the people did not rise up and throw off their chains; they were too busy fighting off the barbarians or what have you. All a fascist has to do is to keep the people pre-occupied with an external "threat," however illusory, and the majority of people will go along to get along.

My experience of human nature is that suffering, most times, causes people to turn against each other and attack those closest to them. Chickens trapped in a too-small pen do not rise up and conquer their oppressor; they start chewing off each other's feathers. Most people are chickens. Was it Aristotle or Plato who defined us as "featherless bipeds?" If Whistleass declares an open end to elections and says the times are too perilous to consider changing leadership, then a significant minority will go along and say, "OK, cool." The more people sacrifice, the more invested they are in telling themselves it wasn't all for naught. So if a dictatorship is established, and huge numbers of people lose their chance to buy medicine or own a home or send their kids to college, they will enshrine these sacrifices in their own minds as part of the war against terror and kid themselves that it's somehow something noble to be a dupe of the Whistleass.

If we have an outright dictatorship, there is no hope at all -- the brave minority that doesn't have to hear voices on the radio to tell them what to do will be jailed or possibly killed. How long was it before a free republic returned to Rome after the Caesars?

I think if you allow Whistleass to boldly establish an open monarchy or dictatorship, it will be hundreds if not thousands of years before the damage can be undone.