We have already lost

if we don't make changes

What an individual person does not understand is that it is not the present that concerns other people, but the possibilities for the future. This means that be Nash equilibrium, and the prisoners dilemma factor into the degree of trust that a person or country projects.

Let us take an election where there are two parties. In an election where there are two candidates, or more, who both want to have a democratic mandate, and people know that future elections will be the same, then trust can be built that there will not be a dictator.

But if there is an election where there is one candidate who wants to form a democratic mandate and the other who promises to be dictator, then there is one choice to maintain a democratic mandate. But that means that the democratic mandate candidate must be competent, and this is not always the case. That means that in some future election, there will be a candidate who cannot convince the elected that a Democratic mandate is viable. This means that sooner or later a dictator will be chosen when the democratic mandate candidate is thought to be incompetent. Note that it does not mean that be democratic mandate candidate is incompetent merely that he or she cannot convince the public.

Realize that the media is slanted towards the very rich, and that means they will push the democratic mandate candidate down at every possible turn, and there will be a section of the electorate who actually wants a dictator. This means that only a small percentage of people need to be convinced that a competent seeming dictator is better than an incompetent seeming democracy.

This is the prisoners's dilemma: the worst possible outcome is a dictator, but next worst possible outcome is an incompetent democratically, elected president. This means that it is possible for a dictator to be elected if there is no choice in the forms of democracy available.

Which also means that after a dictator is overthrown or outlasted, you are back to the prisoners's dilemma election. There is no reason why a dictator cannot be elected in some future election unless the laws and formalities are enforced much more strongly.

That means that other people or other countries cannot trust the country because they know that eventually a dictator may be elected when there is a problem which cannot be easily solved by one election.

I submit that Obama was a competent president, but not a truly great one. The mess that be American republic was in, was not solved by his methods. This means that in the next election Trump was willing to say that he wanted to be a dictator because that is the structure that American companies fit best in because there are many companies not just one. The next election, the dictator was up against a democratic mandate candidate, who was only possible as president. The electorate decided that, with the appropriate amount of massaging from a media that wanted to become richer than they were, a dictator was better than another passable Democratic electorate candidate because they were on the edge of looming disaster.

That meant that they not only wanted a dictator, but an unlimited power dictator so the Supreme Court and both houses of Congress were put in Trump's hands.

In the corporate democratic party, which runs the offices of minority leader of both houses of Congress, they do not learn the appropriate lesson: they want to go back to the election after Obama and change very little and promise, cross my heart and hope to die, that this will not happen again. Unfortunately, other countries cannot believe this because they understand the lesson quite well: if there is a chance for a dictator to be elected, then eventually one will be. That means that Trump is not the last dictator, but only one of a string of dictators, which eventually will lead to an effective dictator that closes down all signs of dissent.

This means that, in a mathematically probable way, we must interact a series of laws that will prevent a dictator from coming to power and populating the other branches with friendly people who support a dictator, even if they do not have the ability to be one.