Trump, The Autocrat
According to septuagenarian, Harold Meyerson, ex-President, Donald Trump will become America’s “first genuinely autocratic (not to mention vindictive and deranged) president.” The operative word is “ex-President.”
The network of autocracies led by Russia and China would grow stronger, because their main narrative—democracy is degenerate—would be reinforced by the incoherent, autocratic American president.
Imminent tyranny is a common and continuing refrain from Progressive augurs. For this reason, these seers warn that we must vote for any Democratic candidate, even if in the form of a head of lettuce, in order to save America from autocracy.
Is there a snowball's chance in hell that Trump becomes America’s first autocrat? Or is this oft-repeated trope past its shelf life, lacking resonance with the public, except for a declining clique of forever delusional partisans?
The Testimony of Experience and Habit
America has already endured the presidency of Donald Trump. Common sense suggests that any future reign by the same sovereign shall be similar in temper, for better or worst. Trust in another is best validated by how that person has habitually conducted themselves before (in whatever capacity).
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
Whatever else one might reasonably say about the prior administration of President Trump, there is scant evidence that Trump aggressively sought tyrannical power. Even if he entertained a secret fantasy, it is evident that Trump lacked the necessary disposition to accomplish such a feat in a constitutional system so designed to inveigh against usurpations. It would require an organized strategy, a disciplined and steadfastness of intent, the ability to curry and retain a coterie of loyalists. As evident in all those tempestuous Twitter belches in the wee hours of the morn, Trump’s concerns and initiatives were all over the map, little of which was actuated. The White House was a revolving door, spun out of control, not exactly a milieu which inspires loyalty to its leader.
The January 6th “insurrection” is typical of disorganized wish if, indeed, it was Trump’s fantasy desire. Insurrections, by definitional nature, involve complicated planning.
what all successful insurgencies have in common are five key elements: (1) control of the media, (2) control of the economy, (3) the capture of administrative targets, (4) the loyalty of the military, . . . (5) the (lack of existing) legitimacy.
No honest and rational person could deduce the existence of such a plot from the aimless wanderings of the zombies who successfully invaded the Capitol Building.
I am herein not denying the possibility that Trump hoped to reverse the results of the 2020 election, potentially exploiting the protest, if, by chance, it spontaneously succeeded. But if it was an operation at all, it was a Mickey Mouse operation.
Trump “animal instincts” consistently, (if bewildering to his adversaries), know how to keep just on this side of the laws, even when violating their spirit. Nevertheless, a judicious mind requires judging upon what one can prove, not what one suspects.
The Argument from Age
Much ado has been made of Biden’s age of late, his doddering gait, the superfluity of gaffes and long pauses, the moments of incoherence, all signs of the decline of mind and body.
Yet Trump is only three years younger. Despite his vigor relative to Biden, does any honest and rational person think that Trump has the energy to attempt a coup, especially considering the current level of organized opposition. The oldest candidates in a free civic polity (those of which I can recollect), who might have had such ambitions in history, were less than 60 years of age (i.e., Pompey, Gaius Marius). One even succeeded (Sulla, 56 years). While not impossible, it is highly plausible for a person of 80 years to succeed.
The Tit for Tat Politics of a Decadent Civic Polity
Consider the legally dubious stratagems, contrived by Trump’s adversaries, who justified their political dirty tricks upon the same premise as that of Nixon’s White House. Even before Trump’s inauguration, the Democrats sought to reverse the 2016 election through machinations of the Electoral College. The 25th Amendment, which was designed precisely for the current situation, was dangled as a possibility to undo the election. Even apart from the machinations of the “deep state,” the Democrats conspired and contrived to misuse the laws and the Constitution (re: the specious grounds and dubious due process for impeachment) in order to overturn the election or effectively cripple Trump’s ability to govern.
All such ploys understandably lend to paranoia, such as that the 2020 election was rigged to sufficient extent that it would have made a decisive difference. O the basis of all evidence which one can glean after three years, it would not. The election was not that close.
Democrats worry about a vengeful and vindictive President. They are right to feel so. For in a fashion, which far exceeds any administration since the McCarthy era, these Democrats have brazenly used and abused the laws and the organs of government to oppress their adversaries.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
– George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
Even as snot-nosed Lilliputians deface the statutory mementoes of superior, if flawed, men of stature, the words of these men of stature remain prescient even unto, and especially in, this day. For history, the history of the Roman Republic in particular, attests that autocracy is more often the function of long drawn out factionalism which invariably leads to civil conflagration and bloodshed. There are very few successful usurpers in a relatively peaceable civic polity. Such succeed only when anarchy already pervades, and the populace has long become exhausted from all of its fears.
It should be unnecessary to refute these scurrilous alarms in a healthy democracy whose people have not lost the ability to think critically. If, indeed, such a populace has become so ignorant, so unthinking, so lacking in intellectual integrity, virtue, probity, and sanity, then such a populace is unfit for self-government. Such a populace deserves autocracy.