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A history that looks back to a mythologized past as the country’s perfect time is a key tool of authoritarians. It allows them to characterize anyone who opposes them as an enemy of the country’s great destiny.

In the book's conclusion, Richardson makes the argument that the danger of authoritarianism has been kept alive by a significant faction within the Republican Party. Richardson asserts that this group aims to reinforce a mythological history of the United States, one in which heroic white men thrived in a moral and self-reliant nation, without support from the federal government. Richardson characterizes this rhetoric as typical of authoritarian regimes, which often depict their ideological opponents as enemies of the state. These enemies, then, must be countered by any means necessary, including replacing democracy with autocracy.

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