Wow, ok. User name does not check out.

Jokes aside though I feel attacked and my defence mechanism is to braindump, so consider what is to follow to be on you.

you should shut the fuck up with your ‘well actually’ de facto dictator apologia

As I was trying to make clear with the implicit disclaimer at the beginning of my comment and the explicit disclaimer at the end of my comment, that was not my intention. What I was trying to do was expand on the historical context as @[email protected] already pointed out (thanks btw). I am well aware that the term dictator has lost its connotation of "temporary office" long ago, and it is today used pretty much in the sense of absolute monarchy.

Rome didn’t have that many ‘dictators’ give up power

The GP asked "how many do you know", and essentially I replied "at least two but pretty sure it's more" to that.

But ok, you posit I test. Here is my counterargument. With knowing Wikipedias love for lists and a search you land here: List of Roman dictators.

List starts 501 BCE, ends 44 BCE, with Julius Caesar by the way. I would eyeball its length at ~80-100 entries. That would amount to a dictatorship once every five years roughly.

The article helpfully explains a few Latin terms it uses, among them "abdicavit – abdicated, or resigned". Ctrl+F says 7 occurrences, minus the one explaining it that are 6 mentions of the term, so my new guesstimate would be there are at least 6 dictators (in ancient Rome) who relinquished their office willingly. And I would bet you could get that number higher if you dig into the details, and start looking at term limits and stuff.

So all I'm saying is essentially the dictatorship was an office that was regularly employed for nearly 500 years by an ancient state, and was then abused to bring about the destruction of its system of government. Remind you of anything? Like the presidency? Trump?

the vast majority of societies with authoritarian dictators are dysfunctional

Like those that exist right now? Not only the vast majority, all of them are dysfunctional and I never doubted that. Seriously you are preaching to the choir here. I was literally at court today because a number on a piece of paper was too low, and I couldn't pay to get a newer piece of paper. Luckily the case was dismissed, so I'm pretty fond of the rule of law and separation of powers at the moment, but also equally aware of the monopoly on violence the state claims for itself and how fragile that makes it.

I sense that you are angry, and most likely afraid, and I empathise with that. And due to that level of distress I would assume you are from the US. I'm not sure what to tell you except trying to resist the slide into dictatorship the best you can. Caesar was assassinated, and Hitler only narrowly escaped assassination several times is all I'm saying.

again: shut the fuck up.

Yeah, no, you little dictator. :P