“What the author is saying is that a republic may be necessary, but as we are sadly witnessing, it is not sufficient to save us from the tyranny of the masses.”
I note that Ayn Rand didn’t write her books in Stalin’s USSR: she came to America. Why didn’t she try being an individualist in the USSR? Obviously because then she would have become a little known corpse, instead of a world-famous author.
We either band together now to save the last best hope of mankind, or suffer the extremely negative consequences. The message that politics is no longer relevant is very very mistaken.
Being an individualist does not mean being a hermit; rather, it means working for the benefit of one’s own life. Often that means working with others who share the same goals to protect our own freedoms.