Of course humans lived for thousands of years in nomadic, egalitarian, relatively non-oppressive societies. How does that count against what I'm arguing here? I'm not arguing that totalitarianism is good. I'm saying that totalitarianism is built into the idea of civilization in so far as the latter is a Promethean revolt against animalistic life in the wild. The idea is to correct for nature's absurd amorality with a meritocratic culture. Ideally, then, that culture would be all-inclusive, and that preference for absolute artificiality would support authoritarianism rather than liberalism.

This doesn't mean I support all kinds of authoritarianism. I'm aware of how they tend to go horribly wrong, and anything like Trump is a Lovecraftian abomination. That's the upside of liberalism, but liberalism must account for its deference to luck in allowing for free social interchanges. As a form of civility, liberalism may be incoherent.