Or maybe a group of people facing existential calamity actually do need fairly strong leadership?
Taiwan and especially Singapore might be characterized as much less 'liberal democratic' than the US, and they have already tamed coronavirus while the US flails and a lot of people are dying. Maybe that's not a perfect example, but it surely illustrates the point.
This seems like a dangerous meme right now
Citation? Examples? Where is the evidence of this?
I think Trump is an excellent example of 'Completely lacking in competency 'fake' strong man' - but there are plenty of counterexamples.
However, long term, authoritarian leadership makes things worse due to lack of transparency and accountability to the people. They can clean things up short term, but then they hold onto power and rot society.
I guess there could be a place for temporary authoritarian governments to swoop in, sweep up the mess, and then hand over things to liberal democracies, but they don't hand over power easily.
A book I read on Vietnam (A Bright Shining Lie) floated the idea that communism never delivered on its promise to make society more equitable, but communist revolutions have played a role in eliminating backwards feudal governments and clearing the way for liberal democracies to take over. Kind of like a shock treatment, but with a very high price in terms of human suffering.
Anyway, we should all be very suspicious and ready to oppose authoritarian creep, because we're all susceptible to it right now, and it could stick around even after this virus passes.
It seems to me the authoritarian way would be that the strong man issues an edict which may or may not be legally allowed or based on reason, and then his stooges, which may be the police or military, enforce it in a draconian manner, without regard to what the written law may permit.