Get off your smartphone and look around
Can you feel the dictatorship? Do you feel it? Do you feel it coming?
I can.
I can feel dictatorship on its way.
I feel it right here at home right now right here in the USA.
Trump’s approach in his second term feels different from his first term. It feels different from what I remember under Texas boss man LBJ, who despite accumulating a great deal of executive power ended up walking away from the Presidency. What Trump has done far exceeds the last “Imperial Presidency” of Richard Nixon. Nixon was paranoid and suspicious. He was not financially crooked as much as he was corrupted by his pursuit of power to cover over his insecurities and fears. Hence he walked away from Vietnam and was consumed by the Watergate scandals. Eventually Nixon resigned from the White House and was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. Trump, however, admires presidents-for-life abroad and brags about winning a third term here in America.
We can look back in American history at presidents who accumulated large amounts of power. The first elected POTUS, George Washington, made a point to step down after completing two terms and refused to stay in power. Washington refused to participate in political parties as he recognized them for what they were and still are, divisive factions more interested in establishing and maintaining power than serving the people and their nation. Andrew Jackson took on the excessive, extraconstitutional institutions of the National Banks and dismantled them. His campaign against the intrusion of private wealth into the control of US monetary system was so bitter it earned the name “the Bank War.” He also ignored and rebuffed the Supreme Court when they opposed his treatment of Indigenous Americans with forced removal of tribes from their native lands and waters. Jackson’s use of the US Military resulted in genocide and the creation of reservations as internment camps upon barren, hostile terrain far from home. The Cherokee Trail of Tears was the most infamous of the genocides under his presidency.
Jackson’s direct, blunt-spoken dismissal of the Supreme Court, his use of violence against subjected populations, and his battles against the early versions of what was to eventually become the Federal Reserve System are among the reasons Donald Trump so reveres him today. Yet Jackson did not seek to become an absolute dictator or crowned a king. He actually despised monarchies. To his core, he was a frontiersman of little loyalty to rich elites and their accumulations of titles. Jackson didn’t seek to profit from various corporate and banking schemes as Trump is actively doing and allowing.
Abraham Lincoln sought enhanced power and even suspended habeas corpus as he sought to win the Civil War and suppress rebellions elsewhere. He also supported the largest legal mass execution in the USA when the leaders of the Minnesota Sioux war were hanged. Yet Lincoln didn’t ever attempt to take over the US as even a Cincinnatus, the man who took over the Roman Republic as a temporary military dictator during a time of crisis then voluntarily relinquished control upon the end of those troubles.
Ulysses S Grant, the military genius of the Federal forces and someone with the clout to take over the nation as some desired, never sought the powers of king or tyrant and stepped down after two terms. He allowed for both financial corruption around him and for genocidal campaigns against the Native Americans, but he didn’t make himself dictator.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke Washington’s informal but established rule and served four terms as president, dying in the last. He overhauled America as no one has before or since. FDR dragged the United States out of the Great Depression and thru the Second World War. He fended off both American Fascists and Communists, despite being called both by his detractors, and prevented civil war between the Right and the Left. He also ordered the round up and detainment of Japanese Americans into internment camps and allowed for their private property to be seized. Americans of German and Italian descent were also rounded up, although not on the scale of those of Japanese ethnicity. Roosevelt accumulated more and more executive power as president, as did his earlier strongman cousin, Teddy Roosevelt. Neither, however, came close to setting up a dictatorship. Both would have been appalled as such a step. Both would’ve considered such treason.
Things get muddier after FDR. Harry Truman strongly established civilian domination over the military with his takedown of General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. He signed in the National Security Act in 1947 to establish the CIA and the National Security Council, among other things. This led in turn to the development of extreme secrecy with unwarranted government coverups of what was then called “Aliens and flying saucers” and now Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena and Non-Human Intelligences. Truman’s National Security Act also led to the accelerated development and expansion during the long Cold War of the so-called National Security State and it’s control of American politics, corporations, policies, the media, academia, and bureaucracies at all levels. This is the true deep state, a term incorrectly applied to established, public serving bureaucrats by Trump and his MAGA mafia cult.
Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about the immense power of what he termed the military-industrial complex by the time he left the presidency after completing two terms. John F. Kennedy took on the CIA, the Mafia, the Klan, the Federal Reserve, and the “UFO Secret Keepers.” He was assassinated for his efforts. None of these men sought to become dictators.
George W. Bush, after the terror attacks of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror, amassed immense power. Much of this was in the realm of both domestic and foreign surveillance, intelligence gathering, and media manipulation. He led the US on a crusade of sorts against terrorist groups and their supportive regimes. Bush also allowed for the rapid expansion of the oligarchic plutocrats and their financial control of American politics. The corporatocracy blossomed. Many people truly expected Bush to suspend the Constitution and assume dictatorial powers in the way Putin did in Russia and Xi in China. After two terms in office, however, the second Bush couldn’t wait to get out of the White House and back to his ranch in Texas. He’d had enough and didn’t want to go any further.
The same can also be said of his successor to the Oval Office and his political opposite, Barack Obama. As president, Obama oversaw further expansion of the national security state and its powers of surveillance and intelligence gathering. He allowed further intrusion of corporations and big banks into political power. Obama was popular, even with the outbreak of the Wisconsin Insurrection, the Occupy movement, the War on Cops, and the First Black Lives Matter uprisings. Many on both sides of the political spectrum accused Obama of becoming a dictator. He also couldn’t wait to get out of the White House upon the end of his presidency. Every president from the First World War on has been accused of being a dictator. All took actions powerful enough to draw criticism, fear, and anger. Yet none of them, even the Imperial Nixon, actually sought to become an all-out dictator, king, or even President-for-Life.
Trump is the first and only one to move towards despotism as he continues to run roughshod over the US Constitution.
Trump appears to be using a different playbook from those used by Twentieth Century despots. Truth is today’s appearances merely reflect or deflect the appearances of the current time, but the underlying playbook is the same one used by strong men and tyrants everywhere. As history shows, sooner or later these strongmen either are removed forcibly from power, or their regime collapses under subsequent leadership, or they die in office and their regime collapses. Sometimes it took a world war, and at other times prolonged, peaceful, mass protests in the streets anchored by widespread strikes.
Two thin, quick reading, yet deep books are recommended for better understanding the push toward dictatorship in the United States of America.
In order of publication, they are:
The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, by Naomi Wolf, first published in 2007.
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder, first published in 2017.
A third, most brilliant book, also short in length and with great depth is:
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, by Eric Hoffer and first published in 1951.
Read those books. They detail step by step the processes taken by history’s nationalist populists and their cult like movements over and over again including today around the planet.
Do you feel the dictatorship now? Do you feel the pushback against tyranny followed by more and more crackdowns as things break apart all around you?
The moment you become too afraid to openly criticize the regime in power is when it is too late. The moment you pause and delete what you were about to post to social media because of fear of pushback either from the government itself or its supporters is when you are no longer the government. The moment you and those close to you whisper and worry if surveillance cameras and hidden mikes may record you is when tyranny has won, at least for the moment. The moment your participation in nonviolent protests, however raucous, can be met by violence and even death becomes more likely than not is when fear wins.
For many in the United States those movements have already arrived. Not perhaps for the overall majority, but control begins with control by state and corporations over smaller groups of minorities. Then it begins to spread like a corrosive cancer across the realm into the majority demographics. It has happened over and over again, and is happening again.
Do you feel it now?
For now is the time to organize and push back to reclaim our constitutional democratic republic. Indeed, to go beyond merely reclaiming our Constitution to constructively use our power to fix our broken, anachronistic system. Such twenty-first century reforms from abolishing the Electoral College and gerrymandering to establishing term limits for all elected offices and many more are long, long overdue.
William Dudley Bass
Sunday 17 August 2025
Saturday 18 August 2026
(Yes, this essay was begun in 2025 just over half a year into Trump’s second term, set down, and picked up a year later to complete.)
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
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Copyright © 2026 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.