Yeah that’s an important thing I have to address. Why do people think that authoritarianism means someone being mean to them?
Edit: I shouldn’t be that sour about it. Definitions are super important part and I’ve seen this coming for months., But there does seem to be like a rather substantive difference between like political science definitions of authoritarianism versus like general use public definitions. Like the general public seems to be really about like on an individual level, and I just don’t think that’s super helpful when you’re talking about governmental structure. there’s a little bit of overlap, but that’s not what the focus of most of the academic writing on the subject is so what pops up on Google when you just google “authoritarian“ is not the definition I’m operating off of, no.
Edit2: But yeah, oh yeah yeah yeah, the US being both a democracy and massively a fan of authoritarian governance is exactly what the memes about and you know trying to talk to anybody about that really seems to be like half of people take it as such a given like your baby for not having gotten over that when you were a kid and the other half like consider it an assault against the soul of America