Once forged on the battlefield, leaders are now proffered by the media, which has significantly increased and amplified their reach. Where nations once bowed to the rule of primogeniture, we are now awed by those who seize and exploit power. Figures like Napoleon, Stalin, and Hitler, with their legions of followers, wrought devastation to millions. Yet, we continue to allow the rise of dangerous leaders who employ the same tried-and-tested tactics that led to the ascent of their tyrannical predecessors.
Tyrants often begin as authoritarians who manipulate the prejudices and fears of the majority to scapegoat a minority. They draw on rallies and propaganda to stoke the embers of prejudice into fires of nationalism. They also employ the latest technology to amplify their message. Napoleon ran two newspapers. Goebbels put a radio in every German home. While today’s authoritarians seek omnipresence through social media. These men (and they’re all men) surround themselves with fiercely loyal sycophants, and they do not tolerate dissent. They meticulously vet and purge their own herds instead.
Authoritarians are not terribly bright people; they’re more monomaniacally driven leaders. They kneel to no man and no God. They prefer to manipulate religion, racism, and the law to suit their purposes. “Love thy neighbor?” Depends on the neighbor. “Though shall not kill.” Again, contingent on circumstances. Their means always justify the end. They alone have the right to rule, adjudicate, and to punish. They decide when and where to send their fellow citizens to fight and die.
Authoritarians who gain political power often turn into autocrats who impose intimidation and force over the due process of law. They do not share power, create succession plans, or relinquish authority. They know what happens to men like them who lose control. They’ve seen how past sins return with a vengeance. This is why they desperately cling to power, less they end up swinging upside-down in a town square like Mussolini, sodomized by a bayonet like Khadafi, or end up like Hitler, dying in a pool of his own urine. It often takes the death of an autocrat for his followers to realize he was a treacherous tyrant.
Tyrants have caused the deaths of hundreds of millions, yet we continue to fall for their nationalistic rhetoric. We had nearly ten years to neutralize Hitler before he went on his European killing spree. We watched from the sidelines for decades while Putin built and unleashed his killing machine. Yet we once again find ourselves well past the window of opportunity of neutralizing mass murderers like Putin, Khamenei, Un, or Xi. Meanwhile, dictators are expanding their fraternity with new tyrannical plebes who give democracy the middle finger while ducking behind Russia or China whenever they get in trouble or need money. They’ve seen Western sanctions’ long history of futility. They have no problem accepting China’s or Russia’s blood money.
Despite centuries of suffering death by fascism, we’re not only allowing tyrants to rise, but we’re electing them. Retreading nationalistic prejudices remains highly effective. In the ‘30s, it was the Jewish “threat.” Today, it’s immigrants. We’ve long forgotten that it wasn’t Europe’s bourgeois who populated and built this country. Those Europeans who risked everything to seek opportunity and safety in America were much like those from Central America seeking the same. But Americans no longer want other countries’ desperate and poor—especially those of a certain color. And neither does Europe. This sentiment is now testing almost every democracy. It’s also a platform that politicians are now legitimizing.
Our faith and fears may be evolving, but our predatory nature remains. Whether the “threat” is from another religion, nation, political party, or a different-colored people, we’re still predisposed to attack. And when we attack in packs, we grow more lethal. We’ve become our species’ greatest predator. Religion, politics, and even technology have yet to change this.
Most people have never been physically threatened by a person of a different race or from another country. However, many still hold an intense hatred or fear of these people. And hatred and fear are easily directed and frequently led. Graveyards are full of those who believed they were fighting and dying to protect their country—when they were really fighting and dying for the whims of a tyrant. One who was highly intrepid…with other people’s lives. And the next generation will do the same for the next tyrant to rise from the hubris of a national conflict.
People forget that a bad economy propelled Hitler’s rise to power. He and his Nazi party were trounced in every election until the Great Depression annihilated the Deutschmark. Before then, most Germans considered Hitler a thug. But he was a politically opportunistic thug. One who knew how to capitalize on a nation’s post-war hate and divisiveness. A leader who excelled at manufacturing threats and then brutally attacking those threats. Hitler won over Germany’s wealthier right-wing party because the German bourgeois at the time feared communism more than fascism. They saw the rise of socialism as the greater threat—until fascists began conscripting and killing their sons.
Fortunately, we have constitutional safeguards to prevent tyranny in this country. Unfortunately, we’re electing people who are circumventing those safeguards. Over one-third of Americans voted for, and will vote again, for a candidate who cites presidential immunity as a defense against breaking the law. A man with over 3,500 legal cases filed against him, 88 felony charges, four criminal indictments, and one felony conviction. A United States President who drafted an executive order to confiscate ballot boxes while plotting to reassign electors in the states he lost. Yet this is by no means a one-man or a one-party problem. Plenty of dangerous people reside on both sides of our legislative aisles. And while they’re publicly squawking and browbeating, they’re peeing in the same national pool and, by doing so, are defiling the country.
Power has never been interested in helping others. It prefers to dominate others. Power lacks basic manners and instead seeks self-gratification. Many of our leaders are more interested in their social media platforms than in running the country. Facebook, Instagram, and X gain more followers and provide a better platform for launching political attacks, which gain more followers. Elections are now won and lost based on who lands the most devastating hits rather than the candidates’ stances on issues.
Most concerning is our escalating national animosity is occurring during relative economic prosperity. We’ve reached the unenviable position where an economic recession may prove as devastating to our democracy as it would be to our economy. It might start with a stock bubble bursting—or questioning and then overruling a national election. Either could lead to left-wing riots, triggering a more devastating response from the well-armed right. This country has seen periods where “national security” replaced individual rights. However, what has yet to happen is an authoritarian takeover of the United States military. Even our most well-intentioned and well-armed fellow citizens could not defend themselves against a military state. Last checked, M-16s and AKs do not stop Switchblade drones and Abrams tanks.
Our political biases have grown dangerous. It’s no longer enough to be just a Republican or a Democrat; one now must behave and vote like a specific type of Republican or Democrat. Our two-party system is turning into a two-headed snake. To de-escalate our present national animosity before it leads to an authoritarian state, we might consider the following:
- Run thorough background checks on all candidates, much like most companies run when hiring new employees. Anyone with a record of breaking the law should be barred from running for or remaining in office. Politicians, like most people, do not go bad all at once. Instead, they begin with “minor” crimes or infractions that history has proven should not be ignored.
- Recruit the country’s top IT experts to ensure our voting system is technologically state-of-the-art. If national banks, credit card companies, and even PayPal, Venmo, and Square can run billions of online monetary transactions daily with effective firewalls and safety measures to discover and protect against fraud, the same technological standards must be applied to our voting process. We can’t afford any questions regarding our elections.
- Eliminate political parties. Yes, this is a big one. America’s political parties may have served a purpose once, but they’ve grown toxic. The animosity between and increasingly within our political parties sabotages our ability to pass meaningful legislation. Even our once-neutral media has taken party sides. We must end the regressive idiocy of incapacitating legislation over party lines. There are far too many electorates and politicians who vote strictly by party line without bothering to learn or explain why.
- Fact-check all political ads before airing. Preventing wildly inaccurate and malicious political ads will reduce the impact of candidates who excel at political attacks rather than running a government.
- Set age limits for Congressmen, Senators, and the President!