*planted decades earlier. no, it was about 800 years earlier. the magna carta gave way to parlimentary democracy, which gave way to universal suffrage, and the first thing that happened next was literal hitler. if you don't point out the fundamentals the rest rides in over top like a trojan horse. democracy is the principle that the will of a numerical majority can overrule principles of law that protect social cohesion. that's directly an attack on actual laws and actual laws that pre-exist being overridden leads to disaster, predictably. also, i'm not writing this with claude's help. i read what it wrote and i am reformulating it both to explain it to you and to bed it in my memory. and fundamentally i agree that leaving the cities is the thing but leaving the country is probably not so helpful. the tentacles tend to be weakest at the greatest physical obstacle to reaching it. move to the mountain village, but don't let your eyes close thinking that's all you need to do.