Re: taking the long view. May I say that this seems a very healthy attitude!? We really need more than simply "2 sides" - other nations have 5, 20, 50, even upwards of 100, but when you get down to "solely 2", you enter a phase shift where neither side has to DO anything, and both can simply claim that they are "not the OTHER side", and that is enough. This often leads to the death of a nation, unfortunately for those of us inside of it right now.:-(

Thank you, and I agree all around here.

I think you touched on something DEEP there. I think it applies to all of us - almost certainly you and I included, on topics that we haven't thought as deeply about (yet). How do we know what we know, you know? Especially when so much of it is manufactured for us, sometimes before we were born, other times fed (and even created) on-the-fly. It takes enormous efforts to break out of that cycle. And as far as I can yet tell, it offers no rewards whatsoever, beyond the pleasure of the doing itself. i.e., seeing may be believing, but so what, if you cannot DO anything about it?

Oh for sure

For myself I don't think I am authoritarian... per se, but I probably am from your perspective.

Probably lol, but tbh I'm pretty far down on that scale, it's all relative really, you seem pretty cool. I agree with most everything you said in your reply, except I do see hope in ending that beurocracy somehow, and preferably "peacefully," (i.e elections not bloodshed, unless it is necessary like a slave revolt or something.)