Defeat Kept Trump from Becoming Strongman

Presidential historians will record that President Donald Trump seemed to have a peculiar fascination with men whom we would label as authoritarians or strongmen when ruling their countries. Those individuals are ones who have complete authority over their country’s affairs even if they have legislative or judicial bodies within their borders. Men like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jung Un are two prime examples that President Trump has shown a certain “admiration” for how they rule. It doesn’t seem to matter to Mr. Trump that one leader has the potential to kill millions of Americans with his country’s military might, while the other one is also developing weapons to kill on a large scale. Many world leaders have kept both Putin and Un at more than an arm’s length, but it appears that President Trump has short arms. Mr. Trump has shown this nation and the world that he is willing to accept the word of someone who rules with an iron fist, and at the same time, dismiss the sound advice/findings of this nation’s intelligence agencies. When has anyone of us ever heard of a U.S. president say that he has received “love letters” from a dictator that the world loathes? Some of history’s most renown strongmen have been Benito Mussolini, Adopt Hitler and now Turkey’s Erdogan has been linked in the company of brutal leaders taking complete control of their nations. The U.S. fought against Hitler and Mussolini in the second world war after we declared war against Japan which led to the downfall of those authoritarian regimes. But now, a quarter of a century later with the current political climate in the U.S., men who seem to mimic the leaders of whom we fought against, have found a seemingly acceptance in President Trump.

Candidate Trump gave the nation and world a sample of just what kind of leader he would be. He didn’t say how he would handle leaders like Putin and Erdogan, probably because he wanted to do business in their countries. That coupled with the fact that candidate Trump bashed American leaders of both parties, because he was able to get away with getting a large segment of the population to accept the lie that Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen. The fact that he never offered any evidence didn’t matter to those who believed that Trump was the “right man” to take America where they believed the nation should go. Candidate Trump got enough electoral votes to win the presidency, which led those followers in government to cater to the new president’s whims, which led to now President Trump to take this country in a direction that men like Hitler and others did in their countries. President Trump is said to have run his businesses like a strongman, with all of the power in the hands of just a few. Family members were in the inner circle we know, along with a select few others like former attorney “fixer” Michael Cohn, who because of his loyalty to Mr. Trump, is serving a prison sentence. Mr. Trump talked as a strongman, but unlike being in business, he had a little something standing in his way. That “little something” is the Constitution. And people having the right to vote for their leaders in fair and free elections.

One thing that strongmen want, is an unquestioned loyalty to them. President Trump tried that early on with former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Since Trump couldn’t “deport” those men to an isolated area never to be seen again, he found those who would walk in formation to do whatever he wanted. He wanted to have control of Congress and the federal court system in addition to the Republican governors who dared not second guess the Chief Executive. But the main thing that Mr. Trump wanted (absent the Constitution), was control of the military. When one studies the history of strongmen, the first thing that they take control of, is the military. Nevertheless, we will not know if Mr. Trump could have succeeded in his quest for total control in a second term, because he lost to Joe Biden. This nation has just celebrated Thanksgiving, and one thing that religious people talk about giving thanks for, is being able to live in a country like the U.S. However, many of them stood by and watched Mr. Trump do things that were very “unchristian” and said nothing. Did this nation come ever so close to being a Germany, North Korea or Russia just a few short weeks ago? We need to always look back at history and never tell ourselves that it could never happen here. All it takes is having more than enough people to believe the message that they hear from those who will place the blame on others when that messenger only wants the power to himself. All of it. Remember, the world is watching. So is God.