Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers, and hopefully anti-authoritarians.

Your fellow orphans here are a grab bag of political orientations.

There are independence, conservatives, Democrats,

libertarians, baritones. And there's a temperamental commonality that we all

share a desire to get along with people we disagree with

rather than march them off to die at bayonet Point or ruin their life on

Twitter

and I think a healthy skepticism towards authority of propensity to view power with suspicion.

And as always, if you disagree with me on any of those things, I will kill you.

I demand total unquestioned loyalty from my listeners.

How else is our cult ever going to achieve tax exemption?

Point is, this is not a super-authoritarian crowd.

But it sure seems like that impulse to force everyone to get on the

same page is percolating around the world, to view power not as a reluctant tool, or even a thing to be outright thrown into a volcano by

hobets, but a sword to claim and wield and snatch from the clutches of enemies.

authoritarianism is on the rise in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and elsewhere.

Even to some extent in Mordor, which is horrible.

I summer in Mordor.

It'll probably be fine though.

Very level-headed country.

Excellent beer.

When we read about Eastern European democracies

...