To defy public opinion while skimming wealth out of the state’s coffers and public commons, national leaders must use the typical tools of dictatorship to intimidate good government advocates into silence: violence, threats, capture of police agencies and courts, intimidation of the press, cowing politicians, and prisons.
I’ve worked in and negotiated with governments in multiple countries where this was the plain reality: Uganda under Amin, Haiti, the Philippines under Marcos, Thailand during the military coup, Colombia, Peru, Russia, South Sudan, China in the 1980s, and a handful of others.
In every case the media was cowed, courts were run by sycophants loyal to Dear Leader, and the police were largely unaccountable to the people while kleptocrats shoveled fortunes into offshore banks and American or British real estate (we are only one of two developed countries in the world that allows anonymous shell companies to “invest” in real estate).
Less obvious, though, is how politicians in functioning democracies become dictators in order to protect their own corrupt attempts to profit off their leadership roles and loot the national purse.
Americans are particularly blind to this, as we’ve never had a president who publicly attempted to use his position of power to enrich himself (even Richard Nixon had the good sense to try to hide the bribes he took from the milk lobby and Jimmy Hoffa).
Looking at how this works in other countries, however, reveals the pattern.
First, the democratically elected leader takes power, like Vladimir Putin did in Russia and Viktor Orbán did in Hungary.
In the beginning, things seem relatively normal, although there’s an apparent zeal for “reforms” that seem questionable like replacing government functions with private contractors close to the leader, appointing incompetent but totally loyal toadies to run major essential agencies, and changes to election laws making it easier for wealthy people to buy elections and harder for democracy advocates to vote.
Those “reforms” are the early warnings that, if not stopped quickly, a dictatorship is being birthed.
Next come loud complaints about “fake news,” “enemies within the government,” and “activist judges”: This is the second major warning that the newly elected leader is trying to move the country toward authoritarianism.
Once the public is inured to these signals, the next step is for the leader to actively convert his position of political power into cash for himself, his family (inevitably: remember Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay?), and the oligarchs he’s brought into his circle of power.
He sells access to himself and the senior levels of his government using barely-legal schemes, bestows favors to corrupt foreign nations and their leaders in exchange for their enriching his family, and systematically replaces judges and agency heads with people whose first loyalty (and, often, financial interest) is to him personally rather than the nation or the rule of law.
This last point is key, and why virtually every senior official in every corrupt foreign government I’ve ever met or negotiated with wasn’t particularly bright and definitely wasn’t qualified to hold the position of power they did.
This is where we are now in America. Our:
— Secretary of Homeland Security doesn’t know what habeas corpus is
— Secretary of State refuses to call Putin a war criminal (after demanding, years ago, that Rex Tillerson in that same position do so)
— Secretary of Education is a billionaire wrestling promoter
— Lead negotiator with Putin about Ukraine is a real estate billionaire friend of Trump with no diplomatic experience
— Secretary of Transportation is a reality TV star with no experience in that field
— Secretary of Defense is an alleged drunk and accused sexual abuser who ran two tiny veterans’ organizations into the ground
— Secretary of Health is a conspiracy-nut lawyer with no training in medicine
— Social Security Commissioner is a former Wall Street executive who had to Google his own new job description
— EPA Administrator is a former congressman with deep connections to the fossil fuel industry
— Secretary of the Interior was heavily invested in fossil fuels
— US Attorney for New Jersey is a former parking garage lawyer, etc.
During his first term, Donald Trump followed the advice of people entrenched in the federal bureaucracy and repeatedly appointed people with reasonable qualifications for their jobs. One after another, from James Comey to Tillerson to Jeff Sessions and beyond, when they refused to swear personal loyalty to Trump or help him promote corrupt schemes, he fired them.
This time, following what could be called the “Putin Rule,” Trump has put 13 of his billionaire buddies in his cabinet and stocked his senior-most roles in critical federal agencies with incompetent but reliably loyal bootlickers.
This illustrates how a wannabe dictator becomes a real dictator. If he’s committed to enriching himself at the public trough (as all dictators are), he really has no choice: he must crack down when his corruption and violations of law are called out.
This is how dictators are always created, at least every one in countries I’ve interacted with.
First, he sets up the infrastructure of corruption and rids himself of the “cops on the beat” (Trump fired 18 Inspectors General whose job is to prevent corruption in major federal agencies) who could stop or slow him down.
Then he fills his administration with people who put personal loyalty or avarice above public service or the rule of law.
Then he opens attacks on the press and the judiciary.
And finally he begins to openly engage in the type of behavior most people first associate with dictators: throwing people in prison or bankrupting them for defying him or speaking out against him.
The problem is that it’s generally only at that final stage that the country begins to realize they’re dealing with a man who wants to be a dictator and is moving quickly in that direction.
This is also typically the moment when Dear Leader is “forced” to use citizen armed militia violence, the legal system, and the military to crush his opponents and terrorize the general public.
Given how fast events are moving in this second Trump administration, June 14 could well be that inflection point, the moment when Trump drops what’s left of the mask of civility and begins what he’ll consider a “necessary” crackdown to protect himself from being held to account for his corruption and lawbreaking.
If the protests coinciding with his birthday celebration in DC are large enough, and, especially, if his people can infiltrate them to provoke violence and property damage like what happened during a tiny handful of the George Floyd protests, it could be the moment when the final threads holding our republic together are broken.
He’s already put into place an executive order preparing the military to turn their guns on civilians. He’s already put otherwise unqualified or even outright neofascist loyalists in charge of federal police agencies. And he’s already ignoring court orders that might restrain him.
This could be the final test of America’s will to democracy. (And, if not this June, it’ll almost certainly come over the following year.)
We sacrificed blood, treasure, and lives to stop the King of England, the fascists of the Confederacy, and the Nazis of Europe. Do we still have the will, the determination, and the courage to fight one more battle on behalf of democracy?
Stay tuned.
