Timely and thought provoking. The only way to maintain a democracy is through excellent secular public education of the entire population. Unfortunately, the US has failed at this in recent decades for many reasons, and the result is devastating. Poorly educated people are ready and eager followers of mob rule and ultimately will relinquish their freedoms to follow a "Stong Man" to "solve" all their problems. In the US today, we have millions of high school graduates and even college graduates, who should still be counted among the poorly educated as they are unable to be be properly skeptical or to use logic, an understanding of history and critical thinking to sort out the truth from the white noise. I sincerely hope we can somehow turn the train around.