Reality doesn’t conform to the theory of the rational, calculating despot who can play the long game.
The president’s falsehoods are dizzying in number, but they follow a predictable, time-honored tradition of how dictators and totalitarians rule.
Fed -up with the imperial adventures of their own western capitalist governments, some radicals wrongly side with foreign dictators in the name of anti-imperialism. The book under review aims to move beyond a disabling “the West and the rest” binary.
Trump admires dictators and seems to want to be one. He wants law enforcement to be his personal force. Trump said of Kim Jong Un, “He speaks, and people sit up at attention ... I want my people to do the same.” Another joke? Sure.
Bad Dictators are arguably Bad, and some are war criminals. But Washington tends to deal with the pro-American dictators by just not bringing them up much.
American democracy has been failing for decades, so a disturbing number of us are turning to authoritarianism. Is Trump our Juan Perón? Trump's Atlantic City empire has crumbled. But Trump himself has somehow emerged stronger than ever. The man who sought to lure all aspiring monarchs to A.C. ('welcome to a kingdom where everybody's treated like a king') has whipped up a heady mix of xenophobia, political bromides, and so-light-it-floats policy proposals into a movement
Tyranny and Texas
Jessica Williams meets Texas residents tired of living under the jackboot of a democratically elected government.
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