That’s alright, I understand. A lot of the people who weren’t there didn’t understand what made it so great, so people tend to forget about it. I just thought it fit in with the others in the picture.

I don’t. I miss that place. It was great! Honestly, one of the best online communities I’ve ever been in.

I would define authoritarianism as a form of social organization based on submission to authority. When the ruler of a nation exerts their authority, the people of that nation are expected to submit to that authority, as subjects of that ruler.

Totalitarianism is an extreme form of authoritarianism, in which the authority is concentrated to one individual, or a small council of individuals, with all dissent forcibly removed. These are your blatant dictators, like Mussolini or Stalin.

you’re usually expected to use your authority at least to: maintain the rule of law, [etc]

That’s exactly what I’m saying. The “rule of law” is a submission to authority, and a ruler needs to use their authority in order to maintain that submission. The only people who would seek out a position that requires them to do that would, necessarily, be authoritarian. Someone who was anti-authoritarian would reject such a position.

This is why the correct response is, “maybe somebody needs to put you in your place, whuddaya think about that, wiseguy?”

and believe you can improve things in that position (not for some gain, but for the sake of it)

But that’s just it, though. How do you expect to “improve” things from that position without using the authority the position grants you?

Acting on your own preconceptions is not the only way. You can have proper discussions with the representatives of your people, and not suppress social media voicing other opinions.

I think you might be mistaking authoritarianism for totalitarianism. Authoritarianism doesn’t need to go to the extremes that you see with totalitarian dictatorships. Authoritarianism can be just something like banning guns, or drugs, or abortions, or LGBTQ+ people.

Why isn’t Google+ on here?

More precisely, they’re popularity contests where the prize is a powerful position of authority. Of course power-hungry authoritarians are going to compete in that contest.

Who else would try to be elected into such a powerful position? I mean, why else would you run, except to exert your own authority?

Go ahead and try to fantasize about what you would do in your first week as the elected leader of your nation. Would you be tough on crime? Restrict access to guns? Criminalize transgender people? Criminalize people who want to hurt transgender people? What about war, or taxes? There’s really no way to do the job without being authoritarian.

Edit: Shit, I was hoping the whole downvote-to-disagree mentality stayed over at Reddit. If you disagree, fine, but at least contribute something of substance to engage with.