The Weimar Republic, the government of Germany in the period between the First World War and the usurpation by the Nazis, is one of the most important periods of history.  How does a country go from perhaps the most constitutionally liberal in the world, to murderous authoritarianism in a few years?

The story of how this happened, and how, as the Socialists, National Socialists, and Communists fought each other, both literally and figuratively, for the minds of the populace, no one stood up for democracy, has many lessons for us.

There is a line that McDonough speaks here that really stands out to me, for what it says about the duty of citizens and political thought generally. He says that the Weimar Republic had a lot of the checks and balances that are found in the US Constitution, which is considered exemplary in this respect, but that "they didn't seem to work when the system came under pressure". Living as we are now with the second Trump Presidency, if the people are unwise enough to elect a demagogue, then what can stand in their way?