 So, I know that by now, we're all not surprised whenever Donald Trump jokes about consolidating power, whether that be him postponing the election, or, you know, running until 2050, or remaining in power until 2050, because he does this, like, all the time, but it still should never be acceptable. Like, as little as I care about norms, the one norm that we should all care about universally is the norm of democracy and respecting democracy, because democracies, they can't function, they can't survive unless there is a buy-in among the populace. So, once we all check out of democracy and we believe that authoritarianism is an acceptable option, that's what it actually does become an acceptable option, because these types of regimes, democratic regimes, they don't exist, they can't survive if there's no legitimacy to them. But Donald Trump is joking once again about maybe running for president in 2024. Take a look. You're going to win four more years, and then after that, we'll go for another four years, because, you know what, they spy to my campaign, we should get a redo of four years. So funny, so funny. We're all laughing hysterically. Now, again, he's trying to trigger the libs and troll, right? That's the excuse anyway. But it's not so funny when this president just recently floated postponing the election, because of fraud due to mail-in voting. It's not so funny when he is deploying secret police to kidnap people on the streets of Portland, Oregon. It's not so funny when he is expanding executive power. Now, this isn't due to Donald Trump, but as we continue to allow the executive branch to grow with the amount of power that it has, it's not funny to see the sitting president joke about running for a third term and just brazenly disregarding the Constitution. Like, this is not something that we should ever allow to be normalized, right? But the fact that this is a joke to them and they're okay with it, it's a dangerous sign, because even if Donald Trump might not be the one to become a dictator in the United States, even if he wants to be one, what this does is this kind of gets right-wingers who are already susceptible to this type of demagoguery and authoritarianism to be a little bit more open-minded about the prospect of having a permanent president, as long as it's one that they like. Now, they'd called out a dictator if a Democrat wanted to become a dictator. In fact, we all remember when they freaked out when Obama said that if he were to theoretically run for a third term, he would win because he thinks he's a good president. Now, he was making a point about how it's important for presidents to step down and respect the Constitution, but they saw that as a threat to democracy. They were hypersensitive to the prospect of anyone staying in power past what the Constitution allows. And now look at them with Donald Trump. They freaked out about all of the executive orders that Obama was signing when he wasn't actually signing that much, comparatively speaking. And now Trump signs lots of executive orders and they don't care about that. You know, even if conservatives are supposed to want to uphold traditions, we've seen them go further and further to the right to where now they're openly flirting with not just fascism, but authoritarianism with Donald Trump. And you had one supporter infamously admit back in what, 2018, 2019, that she never thought she would want a dictator. But if there was ever going to be a dictator in the United States, she'd want it to be Donald Trump. And that might just seem like one outlier. Sure, it is anecdotal evidence, but you have to understand that this large to the right, it doesn't just signify an ideological shift for Republicans. You can only go so far right on policy to where enacting that agenda requires authoritarianism. It requires a decline in democracy. And that's what we're seeing like Donald Trump got the Republican Party's feet wet with regard to authoritarianism. He's testing the waters. You know, it's trolling right now. But in spite of whether or not he's being serious or not, they don't seem too mad about the prospect of him becoming a dictator. Now, again, I don't think that Republicans in a vacuum support authoritarianism, but what this proves to us or at least signals to us is that they're open to the idea if it's a dictator that they want, if it's someone who's on their team. And the problem with this is, again, for democracies to be able to function, you should reject. Like you should have a population instinctively reject the prospect of authoritarianism and even be so touchy where they won't accept jokes about it because that's how bad they think that would be, right? I mean, with dictatorships, you lose civil rights, civil liberties. Like, it's not fun. Like, I know that we oftentimes talk about the decline of democracy in America, but to actually live in an authoritarian regime is a very different thing. Like, ask any Tunisian who lived under the dictatorship of Ben Ali how fun that was for them to where they actually had to be fearful of their own relatives that maybe they were working for the government and were selling them out if they espoused any anti-government rhetoric. Like, it's not fun and I'm not saying that even if we were to become a dictatorship, it would immediately get that bad. But sometimes when you take one path, it's really difficult to reverse that momentum and get on a different path. So now before it's too late, we have to be very clear about rejecting authoritarianism, especially when we have a sitting president currently warming people up to the prospect of a dictator because this dictatorship would be a fascistic dictatorship. Now, again, this is all like, this is not something that's guaranteed. I'm not saying that Donald Trump is going to be a dictator even though I know he wants to be a dictator. But just the mere fact that right now Republicans are open to it and they're not outraged with Donald Trump saying I might run for a third term because they chalk it up to him joking. Right now, you know, it's something we can all kind of brush aside. But in 10 years from now, 20 years from now, what will be the sentiment towards dictatorship if things continue on the same path? So that's why I say we have to take these things very seriously. It's not just trolling or triggering libs. Like democracy requires a buy-in to function because if it doesn't have people accepting democracy, then that regime fails. And all democracies have a shelf life. They're not just going to last forever because we have an old democracy. Democracy is a project that is ongoing, right? I would argue that we're not even a full consolidated democracy. Like women didn't have the right to vote. Black people were slaves at the founding of our democracy. So democracy itself is a project and a healthy society always continues on that path towards consolidating democracy, making it more vibrant and healthy and with everything that we've seen from Republicans with voter suppression and attempt to sabotage the USPS ahead of an election where we're expected to see a record number of people vote by mail and have a president openly joking about running for a third term. This is a bad sign of what's to come. Hit the subscribe button, okay? And whatever you do, folks, do not hit the notification bell either. Life treats me so unfairly.