I am old enough to remember when Dwight Eisenhower was president. My older brother was going to college at Gettysburg, PA, and because President Eisenhower had a home in that community, because we visited that Civil War-era town several times a year, and because there was always a chance that there was a black swan somewhere on earth, they taught me how to greet the president should the opportunity arise
I remember when President Kennedy was shot in Dallas. I was at a pep rally of all things at my rural high school in upstate New York. While the cheerleaders paused on the gym floor to catch their breath before the next cheer, the principal walked quietly up to the microphone to tell us, “President Kennedy was just shot in Dallas and the news reported he had died”. He then dismissed us from school for the rest of the afternoon. We filed out in stunned silence.
By the time Lyndon Johnson was a year or two into his presidency, I was already reading the news every day about Vietnam. My brother had already served there and I was close to draft age myself by then. Richard Nixon followed and I joined the Air Force to avoid Vietnam (but was sent to Vietnam anyway). I remember the Sixties: the mass demonstrations, the Watergate scandal, Nixon’s resignation, and Gerald Ford becoming president.
I remember Jimmy Carter serving as president. We had 52 Americans held captive 24/7 for well more than a year in our former embassy in Tehran as the Islamic Revolution began. I remember people demanding that Carter “do something.” Finally, President Carter said (after leaving office) that he could have nuked Tehran and the radical clerics would be dead along with half a million people, but then so would the American hostages. His point was that strength is sometimes manifest in restraint, a lesson that was eventually forgotten.
Ronald Reagan was not my favorite president, but he was my president anyway and my German heritage taught me to be respectful as much as possible. Bush 41 followed, and I started to see an increased polarization in American society, thanks in part to talk radio, the Moral Majority and Pat Buchanan’s GOP convention speech in 1992. Policy choices were no longer described as effective or ineffective, but rather in moral terms of “good vs. evil.” You were either on God’s side when it came to farm supports, the right to own assault weapons, or free trade, or you were in the clutches of the devil and his demons. Or worse–Socialists!
Bill Clinton’s terms as president represented a new moral slough for the Office of the Presidency. I did not think things could get worse than that. Little did I know. George Bush (43) and 9/11 followed, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As an independent voter at the time, I came to slowly respect “W,” and I had a respect for Barack Obama as well. It was the first time I could vote for a Black American at the top of the ticket instead of old white dudes with prostate problems.. I thought Obama did well, though I did not vote to re-elect him in 2012.
Then came Donald J. Trump — with his boasting about how he could shoot someone in cold blood and still get elected, his advice to Billy Bush about finding true love: “Grab them by the pussy.” I remember how at one debate Trump stalked Hillary Clintonr, prowling behind her on the stage as she was talking. At another televised presidential debate he rounded up every woman who claimed rightly or wrongly that Bill Clinton had molested her and reserved a row for them at the debate. To me, that was in poor taste. I thought he was a real low-class act, so I voted for Hillary.”
We all know how Donald Trump lost the election of 2020. You can read the opinions of dozens of Republican judges who concurred with this conclusion. State legislatures and the overwhelming number of representatives and senators in Congress agreed. More than a few states held investigations, and hundreds of people were indicted by grand juries — either for election fraud after the fact, or for terrorist-like acts against the U.S. Capitol, including assaulting police, threatening elected public officials, and so on.
When Trump was sworn in on January 20, 2025, one of his first acts was to pardon 1,500 of these ne’er-do-wells. Hopefully, many of them have learned their lesson and have since stayed out of trouble. Many others have not. At least one was killed in an altercation with police soon after his release. Several dozen others have been arrested for child sex crimes, weapons violations, or criminal assault. At least one former “J-6” felon is now running for Congress.
“The president ought not to have the power of pardoning because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself — that it was absolutely improper to grant this power in cases of treason— and that granting such a pardon would be tantamount to allowing the executive to place himself above the law.”
– George Mason1
How tyranny takes root in a country
Plato (427–347 BC) predicted that if democracy ever took root in a country, it would eventually devolve into a dictatorship. He quotes Socrates, who says, “Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy…the excess of liberty, whether in states or individuals.” (Republic, Book VIII, 562a ff.) Socrates seems to be suggesting that there should be bridles or guardrails in the practice of our freedom, less we become like wild beasts in the jungle.
It is almost certain that the prominent men who wrote our Constitution had read and reread The Republic including. and especially Dr. Benjamin Franklin. When the conclave of representatives from those twelve of the thirteen states invited finally adjourned on September 17, 1787, the people and reporters gathered outside Independence Hall asked Franklin who was by then 81 years old what form of government the new united states should have. He was rumored to have replied “A republic, it you can keep it.” Perhaps Franklin had Socrate’s warning in the back of his mind as he answered.
Harbingers of fascism
Institutions come under attack
When the framers wrote our Constitution, they included institutions that would provide a check not just on the powers of the federal government, but also on the possibility that one person could become a dictator or proclaim himself to be a king or Caesar. Many framers (e.g., Roger Sherman of CT) were somewhat skeptical of democracy because they believed that people were easily beguiled, and this has proven true. However, as Winston Churchill once said, “. . . democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” However, for the past forty years our institutions have come under attack. One prominent radio talk show host would call the 101st session of Congress the “One Hundred and Worst.” The media, not mentioned in the Constitution but universally thought to be an institution, is frequently attacked and called the “lamestream media.” And the Presidency is mocked by podcasters and bloggers, and the independence of the Courts is threatened by both political parties but in different ways.
Everything becomes a crisis
Fascism depends on fear because leaders prone to fascism motivate people through fear. These fears suggest some enemy within our midst. Fentanyl overdoses become a crisis. Immigration and the need to deport people, including those granted temporary visas, is proclaimed a national emergency. This is because the Leader needs special powers to accomplish what he wishes, and these powers are granted to him only in times of crisis. And if there is no true crisis, then he must manufacture one. If he wishes to punish people in blue states for voting for Harris, he can unlawfully sequester their Medicaid or food assistance, claiming that allegations of fraud which are in fact baseless have provoked an emergency.
In the meantime, as we careen recklessly from crisis to crisis, a new “normal” takes hold of us. We become numb to government excesses. We lose faith in any hope that our government leaders will ever be truthful to us, and some citizens turn to conspiracy theories. People who prudently wear masks during flu season to protect themselves or others around them from contracting the virus are seen as making some sort of political statement that threatens the freedom of people who don’t give a damn about how disease spreads and what measles might do to their child. Masks are seen as some sort of socialist “woke” construct.
Demographic groups are turned against each other
These groups can be racial groups (e.g., white South Africans can emigrate to the U.S. but Black Africans cannot). The rich are treated differently from the middle class and the poor (i.e., you can purchase a gold visa for one million dollars, but if you do not have that, you cannot enter the country). When the Democrats bring out policies that disproportionately favor the wealthy — sometimes at the expense of the middle class and poor — they are accused of promoting class warfare. Yet if these policies become law, then the reality is still there.
Cult-like presentation of the Leader
The Leader is unrealistically elevated to special, almost divine status. It helps immensely if he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder because in that case he is naturally self-engrossed with grandiose delusions. Naming government buildings after himself and splashing giant posters or monstrous banners with his likeness on these buildings also nourishes this cult. The Leader must appear to be infallible, lest anyone challenge his judgment. Therefore . . .
There must be one or more scapegoats in a fascist society
In Nazi Germany, the scapegoats were the Jews and the radical left. In the U.S. today it is Muslims, immigrants, and the radical left. These are the groups that must bear the blame and brunt of failure when the Leader miscalculates or over-reaches. The Leader lashes out at senior military officers, broadcast journalists, members of his own party who do not bend the knee to him, and of course, the opposing party. There are frequent accusations of treason merely for suggesting that the Leader is aging normally for an octogenarian.
The free press is attacked as the “Enemy of the People”
The term “enemy of the people” is a phrase largely foreign to American political discourse, going back to ancient Rome (hostis publicus), but in modern times it was reintroduced by Joseph Stalin, another totalitarian.
Nikita Khrushchev: At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956, Khrushchev revealed: “Stalin originated the concept ‘enemy of the people.'” (Marxist Archives).
Mao Zedong: Chairman Mao used this same term when he gave a speech clarifying “what is meant by ‘the people’ and what is meant by ‘the enemy,'” declaring that those who attempted to oppose the state’s socialist revolution were “the enemies of the people.”— and you have discussed this in our earlier conversation. It would strengthen the historical argument.
Armed or violent supporters and street soldiers
The regime is supported by armed and often violent groups of citizens who share the Leader’s agenda. The Nazis had their Sturmabteilung (SA) or Brownshirts under Ernst Röhm, while at the same time Italy (itself under fascism) had its Blackshirts, the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (MVSN). Even the pre-World War II United States had the Silver Legion. What each of these groups had in common is that they served as a “bridge” that crossed the gray area between legal activities and
criminal activities. Usually, they are irregular forces or just plain thugs. Similar groups in the U.S. today include the Proud Boys, and perhaps the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers. None of these groups has been formally designated as a terrorist organization, but individual members of such groups have been arrested and convicted of serious crimes, including in some cases seditious conspiracy.
Control of elections
Notice that the current administration never complains about corrupt elections when POTUS or the supporters of POTUS win. But when they lose an election, then they complain that the “fix is in.” Yet, repeated investigations in both red and blue states and independent bipartisan audits of voters and their votes never indicate a problem anywhere as prevalent as this Administration claims. In fact, as someone who has followed this issue closely for almost forty years, I would guess that in all the elections held for state and national candidates, there have been fewer than 2,500 deliberately fraudulent votes in those four decades. By “fraudulent” I mean someone stealing the identity of another person to vote (such as the identity of a person who has died), someone deliberately voting more than once, someone using fake credentials, etc. Most of the irregularities deal with a woman who marries and neglects to register in her new name, or perhaps a voter moves across the street to a new house but that puts him in a different precinct. There has been no proof that people in Russia, China, or Ukraine are illegally voting in U.S. elections. Yet, this “big lie” continues to be promoted, and Congress is currently dealing with an initiative by the Administration to either illegally seize control of November’s election or at the very least, cause so much confusion or grief and inconvenience that many would-be voters throw up their hands and sit the election out. That would mean a number of potential GOP voters would stay home, but it would affect and disenfranchise potential Democrat voters much more.
Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution reads:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [sic] Senators.
This is exactly what POTUS and the MAGA Republican controlled Congress are attempting to do at this very minute. They are trying to alter existing statutes and case law through the SAVE America Act. The President is not above seizing and counting the ballots in through his appointees contrary the regulations passed by the legislatures of the several states. This would certainly guarantee that Congress remains in Republican hands for the two years after November 2026. The bill sounds reasonable at a quick glance, but like anything else that is too good to be true, the “devil is in the details.”
This above all to the Leader be true.
The norm (at least since the Pendleton Act was passed in the nineteenth century) was to have the best administrators in charge of decision-making in Washington. These bureaucrats, generals and admirals, foreign service people, etc. were expected to support the incumbent president’s policies or at least not to sabotage them, but their supreme allegiance was to the Constitution. They were expected to provide honest and professional advice to the President, the Cabinet, and the Senior Executive Service. Around the time of the Clinton Administration, conservatives in America moved in favor of term limits and in favor of ordinary citizens being placed in delicate and sophisticated positions beyond their capabilities, rather than having career civil service professionals or their representatives in authority. They failed to realize that Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, et al. spent their lives in government, either for the British or the American government after independence. Jefferson spent time as our ambassador to France and then as the third president of the U.S., but when he was not working on behalf of the country, he was governor of Virginia. To me, putting someone from the streets who sold shoes in charge of nuclear nonproliferation, or a realtor expected to deal with the Russian war in Ukraine, is like taking a bus driver and appointing him to do brain surgery. This is why we have people today running the U.S. health care system who have no appreciation of vaccines or medicine, or a Secretary of Homeland Security who spent more time (and likely money) on glamour shots and visits to men’s prisons in third-world countries than on getting FEMA requests processed so that law-abiding Americans in North Carolina have a roof over their heads after their home is destroyed in a storm. Today, when POTUS sends out a post on his Truth Social platform saying he expects this judge or that lawmaker or such-and-such of a reporter or comedian to be arrested, or investigated, or jailed, he is telling his Attorney General to “do it.” Make it happen, or you will be replaced with someone else from Fox.
“When the representation is partial in its nature, power will be partial also — and the executive, drawing its appointments from the same narrow class, will represent not the people but a faction of the people — which is the definition of tyranny.”
– Richard Henry Lee
From where did the Proud Boys get their brand?
“I’ll make you proud of your boy
Believe me, bad as I’ve been, ma
You’re in for a pleasant surprise
I’ve wasted time I’ve wasted me
So say I’m slow for my age
A late bloomer, okay, I agree
That I’ve been one rotten kid
Some son, some pride, and some joy
But I’ll get over these lousin’ up
Messin’ up, screwin’ up times
You’ll see, ma, now comes the better part
Someone’s gonna make good
Cross his stupid heart
Make good and finally make you
Proud of your boy”
Songwriters: Howard Elliott Ashman / Alan Menken
Proud of Your Boy lyrics © Walt Disney Music Company, Wonderland Music Co. Inc., Wonderland Music Company Inc., Wonderland Music Company Inc
What you can do to protect our Constitution
How can this slide towards fascism in America be halted and democracy restored?
Step one deals with understanding that our democracy has been hijacked and we’re headed towards parts unknown. While the immediate crisis goes back six years or so, the seeds for this dangerous trend were sown decades ago.
Step two deals with resistance. The most effective way of resisting this trend towards fascism is locally at town hall meetings, through peaceful mass demonstrations in the streets and, if necessary, strikes, boycotts and so on. Demonstrations must be peaceful for a number of reasons. The government must not be given an excuse to use force against protesters. Also, when you look at militia groups and people who own assault weapons and other paramilitary paraphernalia, these individuals are often right-wing in their political orientation and are occasionally spoiling for a fight — sometimes for political reasons, but also for racial reasons. I personally prefer protests where I know something about who might turn up. My wife and I went to one large rally last year where there were a few thousand people, and there were one or two strangers with megaphones who seemed to have extensive experience protesting and who supported different causes, some of which I might not agree with. Some carried signs calling for violence. They also used a good deal of profanity, which is objectionable and certainly unnecessary. I will not allow myself to get swept up in that. We have a protest in my town on Tuesday evenings as people drive home. No one blocks traffic, no one allows themselves to get caught up in confrontations, etc.
Sometimes other groups will try to piggyback on the rally you are attending. These may be pro-Palestinian groups, anti-gay, or anti-abortion groups. There are still some conspirary folks from the QAnon community running about. And there are socialists and anarchists, and I will eschew them as well. I’m fairly choosy about the company I keep.
Strikes and boycotts are also useful as momentum builds. You don’t want to cause hardship to local businessmen and women if at all possible. When I shop somewhere, I usually don’t care how the owner votes or what his politics are. But if the vendor is ‘in my face’ with MAGA flags, hats and signs and such, I just won’t hire them. I won’t argue with them. I’ll just say the person is not a good “fit” with what I had in mind, and no offense intended. He can draw his ownconclusions.
We canceled our subscription to the Washington Post and also Hulu, because they caved in to the administration over the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel. Presently, I’m not happy with CBS, but then we don’t watch anything on CBS. And of course we won’t purchase a Tesla.
Step three: Look for people who are leaving the MAGA movement, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene. When her eyes were opened about the person she worshipped, it didn’t automatically make her and me friends, but I do look for ways and opportunities to encourage and support her, even as I did for Liz Cheney. I’d send encouraging cards to MTG if I had her address. When the Secretary of Defense — Pete Hegseth is not legally called the Secretary of War — went after Senator Mark Kelly, I wrote letters and supportive posts on X and elsewhere to show my solidarity with Senator Kelly. I also take the time and trouble to look up the addresses of columnists and other public officials, such as the police chief of Minneapolis, MN, when they do something honorable and courageous. I spend a bit of time each day on several different social media platforms warning people of the approaching storm or reminding them of promises broken by this administration. I read overseas newspapers each day, and if the Speaker of Poland’s legislative body was criticized by the U.S. or the Danish Prime Minister was threatened, I make sure to spread the news once I’ve personally verified it. I believe absolutely nothing that I read on Instagram or Bluesky unless I can verify it to my satisfaction.
Afterword
The only way to turn back the clock is for the people of this country (or at least a majority of voters) to come together to vote for a reasonable elected assembly this November. There should be people who care more about you and good government than getting reelected. Immigration and campaign finance reform will be a must. A person who has one hundred million dollars and business before the government should not be able to buy an election. The presidential pardon system also should be revisited because of abuse from presidents of both parties. This reform would likely require a Constitutional amendment. As it is now, there are people who can probably break the law with impunity, confident of a presidential pardon after the fact.
Change must come peacefully. Protesters should not hurt anyone nor destroy anyone’s property (this is not the Boston Tea Party after all). Police, the National Guard, ICE, and so on should be respected because they play an important role in our society, even if there are a few bad apples. These rogue officers must be arrested and brought to justice if they violate the law.
The courts are our friends, in spite of several egregious opinions. Many individual Republican and Democrat district court judges and some circuit court judges, with a few associate justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, are taking brave stands on our behalf and in support of the Constitution. In some cases, these judges or justices are conservatives, so they will no doubt favor conservative outcomes on the cases they hear. But they are fair, law-abiding, patriotic Americans and should be treated with respect. As it is now, the courts are the only check on the unbridled power of POTUS.
Footnotes
1The actual quote delivered by Mason August 22, 1787, as recorded by James Madison is:
The president ought not to have the power of pardoning because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself — that it was absolutely improper to grant this power in cases of treason, which may be perpetrated against the United States and for which the president himself may be a principal — and that granting such a pardon would be tantamount to allowing the executive to place himself above the law.
Mason, a delegate to the constitutional convention from Virginia ultimately refused to sign the Constitution.
Richard Henry Lee signed the Declaration of Independence but did not attend the Constitution Convention.
Statements in the pull quotes come from either the personal correspondence of the author, or from the minutes of the ratifying conventions.
Anthropic Claude 4.6 provided several of the talking points of this essay.
“If the Executive should be a single person, I do not see how liberty will be safe in the hands of a single executive. The people will be at the mercy of one man.”
– Melancton Smith
2 Responses
Brilliant essay! Resistance to the madman grows everyday in our country and throughout the world. Every thinking American needs to show their resistance to the dictator on Saturday, March 28.
Remember, there are more of us than there is of them.
Thank you, Ted! You are a true patriot who loves our country and expects better from our leaders.