Enough Musk Spam

A Lebanese doctoral student has no fans, so when ICE comes for her people don't get angry.

But if ICE comes for Musk then his millions of followers will be quite engaged.

So while I absolutely agree with you, I'm quite happy for Musk to be a sacrificial lamb in this case. The fact that he's an asshole makes it easier to accept.

Democracies do have plenty of possible protections. It's just that human nature allows for fallacies like of "once elected leader, always true leader" or, the same, "once captured a market honestly, always a deserved monopoly". Also human nature allows for another fallacy, that being able to threaten "bad" people is beneficial for "good" people. It's not. Any mechanism of threatening people with, say, deportation is not a weapon in the hand of some "good" group, it's a weapon in the hand of anyone who captures it, and its real state and ownership is always unclear.

It's very simple theoretically to defend a democracy, make it so that even a person publicly insulting mothers and sisters of all his compatriots would be completely safe (except for being ignored by some of their acquaintances), and that a person committing the worst imaginable crime could be certain they'll live in prison like Anders Brejvik at worst. No ape vengeance.

One good trait of rules is that they, when followed, work with clear limitations and verification, and that they don't require keeping anyone in fear. A means to keep one man in fear are the same as means to keep a land in fear.

Fear is not only the mind killer, it also kills the dignity of those relying on it for their safety.

It's very simple, don't fear and don't try to keep others in fear. When these are fulfilled for you as a thought experiment, you might notice some glaring flaws in the modern societies that you don't see when thinking inside right\left or libertarian\authoritarian or liberal\conservative categories.

I see your point. But this is something else and has a lot to do with lack of democracy to begin with. Elon Musk is/was above the law which is undemocratic in itself. He was never elected by anyone, yet wielded enormous power over the government and damaged the institutions. All this while not even having US citizenship.

To be clear, I'm not rooting for Trump or Bannon, those are traitors and grifters who sell the country for their own profit. Nobody should be above the law and those people should face consequences for their actions in a democracy. So, if you want to strengthen democracy it might be a good idea to start by fighting against the people who are willfully and deliberately destroying it, instead of defending them. That's my take.