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Trump tried to turn democracy into dictatorship
Someone on YouTube asked me something like this:
Why aren't you analyzing what's happening right now in the US presidential elections?
That's where the real action is right now.
Well, he has a point, but also misses an important point.
It's an incredible circumstance indeed.
And it's an opportunity for studying power dynamics, if not a risk for the world, to watch it in real-time, and you bet I daily check Trump's tweets, as well as listening and watching him talk.
Yet, this is also standard, textbook power dynamics.
It would be like commenting on a guy wanting to sleep with a woman on the first date, and the woman liking him but wanting to make sure he also sticks around.
Such as, what's happening with Trump is exactly what you'd expect in this political situation, from a guy with the temperament of Donald Trump.
And what you'd expect is him trying to do all he can to cling to power, as well as dismantling democracy and all the checks and stops to his power.
Which is exactly what's happening.
This is how democracies revert back to dictatorships.
Trump expected Republicans to help him stay in power, independently of the will of the voters.
I think some people might have underestimated the risk Trump posed to democracy.
If other Republican lawmakers had back him up 100% in their home states to overturn the vote, the US might have been heading towards dictatorship now. Quite a scary political prospect for the world, considering two of the other 4 world superpowers are already closer to a dictatorship than democracy (Russia and China, with the EU also standing as a democratic bastion).
We're not yet 100% fully out of this, but luckily it seems that democracy will hold up.
This is how democracies revert back to dictatorships.
Exactly. I feel privileged to have been able to observe this phenomenon in a western democracy during my lifetime. It really shows that most people have no clue about History.
One thing about History is not that it gives us lessons about what "should never happen again" (high-pitched annoying voice). Of course I don't want slavery to happen again (it still exists though, but not on that scale not in that shape and not in the open). Of course I don't want fascism, nazism and stalinism to happen again. But History is just data, it does not drive our behavior.
It tells us what happened under what circumstances so we can isolate phenomena. THEN, we can predict their appearance and MAYBE attempt to prevent it.
The same causes create the same effects.
I've been to the US a few years ago now and I have to say that it had already quite a taste of a police state. I don't like to say it but that is what I felt.
Here we can see Donald Trump's mental disease:
L’audio (source : @washingtonpost ) ?➡️ pic.twitter.com/sUEX1JMBBP
— Raphaël Grand (@raphaelgrand) January 3, 2021
If you have not worked in psychiatry (I did) or have not studied narcissism (I did) or have people you know with this disease, he's difficult to understand. If not, he's just a crazy person elected as the president of the US.
These two are two democracy heroes:
Trump called them up at the White House and pressured them to doctor the election results.
Luckily, they stood their ground and put people's choice before party affiliation.
I think what also saved US democracy is the federal structure, which limits the president's power, and gives more counter-power to each state representative.
