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A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.
(www.washingtonpost.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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politics
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It's a good piece and I think the analysis is largely accurate. But there's one thing I think Kagan missed: Trump isn't the only would-be dictator who could take power. He lists DeSantis and Haley as the closest competitors to Trump within the Republican Party, but he doesn't point out that even if, by some miracle, one of them becomes the party nominee, they would assume the very same dictatorial powers Trump is threatening to wield. Neither of them is going to defend democracy when offered the reins of tyranny, and both could easily hold power for decades. Trump maybe has a single decade at most.
The problem isn't simply Trump wanting to be President for Life. The problem is that the path has been cleared for any Republican to assume that role the next time one is elected. Project 2025 won't work for Trump only. The next time we have a Republican President, expect it to be the last time we have a fair election.
Not to run interference for those shitbags cause most of them are just as evil but I wouldn’t say they all equally threaten democracy. For one I’m not sure their base would allow a woman to be dictator lol even if she won due to institutional fuckery
Anyone who thinks she wouldn't try is deluding themselves. They're both cut from the same cloth, but they're not afflicted with dementia yet.
No, none of the other GOP candidates have anything even remotely like Trump's grip on the base. Without that none of the above can happen. Trump got where he is through a long series of steps that Kagan details in the piece. There is no world in which some other candidate steps in and immediately plugs into the same kind of power that Trump has amassed as a result of Republican cowardice. Every one of them would have to start over with consolidating power in a party that's swarming with amoral power-hungry grifters.
honestly I think only trump has what it takes to form the cult of personality necessary to take over. he's got the charisma to entrance 35% the country. DeSantis is more temperamentally fit to be the lieutenant you send in to do massacres than a figurehead leader