John hello...so, are you saying you've lived in your current lifetime under totalitarian regimes as an ordinary subject with no special protections?
And that you see little to no difference there to representative democracies such as those we live in, in the West (which have existed only in the recent historic period and are still evolving)?
If so, then we must agree to disagree, on most of the core fundamentals of our lived experience...and good on you for having survived!
Peace & blessings
7L
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Bound by conventions, people tend to reach for what is easy.
Here we must be unafraid of what is difficult.
For all living beings in nature must unfold in their particular way
and become themselves despite all opposition.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke