Every time I think I’ve heard it all from MAGAland, something else knocks me over. This time it was a video that showed Trump supporters saying they’d be just fine with a dictator as President of the United States.
Republicans were asked if they would vote for Donald Trump as a dictator or for Joe Biden, and a startling 74% said Trump as a dictator.
One man said, “Sometimes we need to be sent to the principal’s office.”
That man may know something about being sent to the principal’s office for schoolboy mischief. Maybe he had an encounter with the principal’s big paddle that we used to hear about. Maybe he corrected his behavior after that experience.
But it defies reason to compare the dictator of a country to a school principal. Most principals have principles, and they are subject to layers of oversight, one within the school system and another layer that is called the rule of law. Dictators have no oversight, by anyone.
It seems ridiculous to have to explain that.
The MAGA crowd who think they want a dictator probably believe Trump would be a benevolent leader who would simply tell them who to vote for, give Putin what he wants and thus settle the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and fix all of our country’s problems, all by himself ! The spanking in the principal’s office would not be for them, his followers who believe he is anointed, but for anyone who opposes him.
In essence, MAGA says a dictator is just great as long as it’s Trump. Would they be fine with Biden or any Democrat as a dictator? Not likely.
Some will argue that Trump was joking when he said he’d be a dictator for one day. A lot could happen in one day. But maybe he was, in fact, making a bad joke.
However, considering how many times he has praised the dictators in North Korea, China, and Hungary, we know how much he admires those guys who rule their countries with an iron fist. Bullies always like to think of themselves as strong men, though they are, in fact, typically weaklings.
History teaches us the process by which a dictator takes over a country. First, he is able to convince the masses that Jews or immigrants or some “others” are responsible for all of their problems, and he alone is their savior.
Once they buy into his fiction, he sets about to dismantle any institutions that might put constraints on him. He makes life intolerable for the “others.”
Journalists are not allowed to report any news that the state, which means the dictator, doesn’t sanction. If journalists do report the truth about atrocities, they are jailed or murdered. State-run media outlets fill the ears and minds of the people with propaganda, convincing them that the dictator is, in truth, their savior.
That is exactly how Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini rose to power. And it’s how the people of Germany and Italy found themselves with authoritarian governments that ran amuck.
Hitler and Mussolini did not save their people. They took their countries to ruin in a world war, with millions of military and civilian casualties. It was a brutal war that included nearly half a million Americans who fought so that we might never lose our freedom, that word that simply cannot be used in the same context as dictator.
Those who trade away hardearned freedom for the promise of security typically end up with neither.
If your outrage over the cost of bread and the Mexican immigrant who does the dirty work for your plumber has caused you to want a would-be dictator as President, please go to the history books.
Not the book banners’ version of history, that only tells sunny stories about White people. In the real history books, it’s never pretty when people fall in behind a dictator.
Phyllis Gobbell lives in Nashville, TN, and is a frequent contributor to the Nashville Tennessean. She taught college English for 20 years in Nashville and has published 6 books, with another scheduled for release in 2024. Among her writing awards in fiction is the Tennessee Individual Artist Award in Literature.