Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule. Why not a dictator who will get things done?
I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh. I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime. I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule. I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated.
So I think that there is an answer to this question.
Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won’t. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.
Another pleasant illusion is that the strongman will unite the nation. But an aspiring dictator will always claim that some belong and others don’t. He will define one group after another as the enemy. This might feel good, so long as you feel that you are on the right side of the line. But now fear is the essence of life. The politics of us-and-them, once begun, never ends.
We dream that a strongman will let us focus on America. But dictatorship opens our country to the worst the world has to offer. An American strongman will measure himself by the wealth and power of other dictators. He will befriend them and compete with them. From them he will learn new ways to oppress and to exploit his own people.
At least, the fantasy goes, the strongman will get things done. But dictatorial power today is not about achieving anything positive. It is about preventing anyone else from achieving anything. The strongman is really the weak man: his secret is that he makes everyone else weaker.
Unaccountable to the law and to voters, the dictator has no reason to consider anything beyond his own personal interests. In the 21st century, those are simple: dying in bed as a billionaire. To enrich himself and to stay out of prison, the strongman dismantles the justice system and replaces civil servants with loyalists.
The new bureaucrats will have no sense of accountability. Basic government functions will break down. Citizens who want access will learn to pay bribes. Bureaucrats in office thanks to patronage will be corrupt, and citizens will be desperate. Quickly the corruption becomes normal, even unquestioned.
As the fantasy of strongman rule fades into everyday dictatorship, people realize that they need things like water or schools or Social Security checks. Insofar as such goods are available under a dictatorship, they come with a moral as well as a financial price. When you go to a government office, you will be expected to declare your personal loyalty to the strongman.
If you have a complaint about these practices, too bad. Americans are litigious people, and many of us assume that we can go to the police or sue. But when you vote a strong man in, you vote out the rule of law. In court, only loyalism and wealth will matter. Americans who do not fear the police will learn to do so. Those who wear the uniform must either resign or become the enforcers of the whims of one man.
Activist holds a sign during protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during a rally across from the White House, in Washington, DC on Feb. 25, 2022. Mandel Ngan / AFP
Everybody (except the dictator and his family and friends) gets poorer. The market system depends upon competition. Under a strongman, there will be no such thing. The strongman’s clan will be favored by government. Our wealth inequality, bad enough already, will get worse. Anyone hoping for prosperity will have to seek the patronage of the official oligarchs. Running a small business will become impossible. As soon as you achieve any sort of success, someone who wants your business denounces you.
In the fantasy of the strongman, politics vanishes and all is clear and bright. In fact, a dreary politics penetrates everything. You can’t run a business without the threat of denunciation. You can't get basic services without humiliation. You feel bad about yourself. You think about what you say, since it can be used against you later. What you do on the internet is recorded forever, and can land you in prison.
Public space closes down around you. You cannot escape to the bar or the bowling alley, since everything you say is monitored. The person on the next stool or in the next lane might not turn you in, but you have to assume they will. If you have a t-shirt or a bumper sticker with a message, someone will report you. Even if you just repeat the dictator’s words, someone can lie about you and denounce you. And then, if you voted for the strongman, you will be confused. But you should not be. This is what you voted for.
By the time the killing starts, you will know that it is not about unity, or the nation, or getting things done.
Denunciation becomes normal behavior. Without law and voting, denouncing others helps people to feel safe. Under strongman rule, you cannot trust your colleagues or your friends or even your family. Political fear not only takes away all public space; it also corrupts all private relationships. And soon it consumes your thoughts. If you cannot say what you think, you lose track of what you believe. You cease to be yourself.
If you have a heart attack and go to the hospital, you have to worry that your name is on a list. Care of elderly parents is suddenly in jeopardy. That hospital bed or place in a retirement home is no longer assured. If you draw attention to yourself, aged relatives will be dumped in the street. This is not how America works now, but it is how authoritarian regimes always work.
In the strongman fantasy, no one thinks about children. But fear around children is the essence of dictatorial power. Even courageous people restrain themselves to protect their children. Parents know that children can be singled out and beaten up. If parents step out of line, children lose any chance of going to university, or lose their jobs.
Schools collapse anyway, since a dictator only wants myths that justify his power. Children learn in school to denounce one another. Each coming generation must be more tame and ignorant than the prior one. Time with young children stresses parents. Either your children repeat propaganda and tell you things you know are wrong, or you worry that they will find out what is right and get in trouble.
In a dictatorship, parents no longer say what they think to their children, because they fear that their children will repeat it in public. And once parents no longer speak their minds at home, they can no longer create a trusting family. Even parents who give up on honesty have to fear that their children will one day learn the truth, take action, and get imprisoned.
Once this process begins, it is hard to stop. At the present stage of the strongman fantasy, people imagine an exciting experiment. If they don't like strongman rule, they think, they can just elect someone else the next time. This misses the point. If you help a strongman come to power, you are eliminating democracy. You burn that bridge behind you. The strongman fantasy dissolves, and real dictatorship remains.
Most likely you won’t be killed or be required to kill. But amid the dreariness of life under dictatorship is dark responsibility for others’ death. By the time the killing starts, you will know that it is not about unity, or the nation, or getting things done. The best Americans, betrayed by you when you cast your vote, will be murdered at the whim and for the wealth of a dictator. Your tragedy will be living long enough to understand this.
Reprinted from the author’s blog: “Thinking about…” See the original here.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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Comments (10)
"Strongman" is a demonstrably inaccurate term. Narcissistic personalities are inherently weak, needing adulation to feel valid. Malignant Narcissists use vengeance to maintain a sense of self, and thus are chaotic, disorganized. Trump exhibits both major behavioral types of NPD.
He is vulnerable, desperately dependent, and malignant, focusing retributively on any perceived slight.
Narcissism is ALWAYS correlated with other social and personal debilities, the "Dark Triad" of behavior. Cold, callous disregard for others' lives, as you witness in Putin, and Machiavellian scheming visible in both.
A 4th trait, sadism, is pleasure in doing harm. Trump constantly signals this dangerous, despicable trait. As you know, life is hedonic; lack of pleasure induces depression. Trump is dangerously dependent upon avoidance of failures in agency, chaotically dependent upon the scapegoating Dr. Snyder notes as characteristic of his "strong", profoundly weak-man description.
Putin exhibits greater Paranoia, once a counterintelligence professional where awareness of possible defection, betrayal, is helpful.
Note that those who betray are subject to the most determined retribution.
Hate for betrayers is deeply engraved in our social brain, driving resistance to change by the submissively ensnared. This contributes to increased Machiavellianness in any once attaching themselves, increasing social dissolution.
@troll jack posing as Imokru2,
Not polite to put words in the mouth of those you impersonate troll 'jack'.
Didn't your parents teach you better manners?
Sorry, that was an assumption that you actually had two parents. Perhaps russian scientists have made advances in parthenogenesis amongst putin's inner circle.
This entire article and all the comments below are just a word salad that would make Kamala proud.
MGRA troll Wayne has somehow blocked posting directly below his putinrump supporting crap below. I want to post a some more putinrump facts as a rebuttal:
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@MRGA troll Wayne.
Why would you try to promote putinrump on a Ukraine supporting site?
putinrump's lying (+21 times a day, +30,500 times in 4 year term), sex assaulting ($88 million fine so far, 19 woman claimants), criminal ($450 million fine so far), 4000 lawsuits before elected, 6 bankruptcies, 2 russia tied impeachments, 91 felony charges including treason against the USA, constant putin praise lavishing (+80 compliments while at the same time insulting all US allies), putin election assisted, fraudster crony pardoning (Steve Bannon's 'Build the wall fraud' Ponzi scheme), narcissistic orange despot (Donald Trump) actually said just last week that he would not spend a penny on Ukraine's defence if elected? pLus he has told his MRGA minions in Congress to stall any further attempt by the Biden Admin to provide more aid to Ukraine.
My oh my, the MRGA trolls are getting dense these days. No sane person buys that crap.
If you were smart you would ask your MRGA handlers to give you a new putin minion to promote since putinrump has already blown his KGB asset cover.
MRGA trolls....what a silly bunch.
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Has anyone ever seen a leader other than Zelensky inspire and unify their people so much. Even under the full might of dissent sowing russian propaganda. Britains Churchill comes to mind but he's from a generation most our parents were not born in.
Curious about this, I decided to search for a similar USA leader. However annual polling data prior to 1937s was not readily available. ' It appears President Truman when he entered office had the highest 87% approval rating, but then his average over his term sank to 45%. The President with the highest average approval during service seems to have been John F. Kennedy but assassination cut his term short so who nows. Eisenhower completed his term with the highest rating at 65%. Closely followed by Roosevelt with 63%. George Bush senior had 61% approval average. Surprisingly at least to me, Reagan only had a 53% average putting him 2 points behind Bill Clinton.
At the very bottom of available results came Trump with what I expect many outside the USA would consider a shockingly generous 41% rating over his divisive term. Of course he did have the full support of russian propaganda. Still for someone that spread so many lies (+30,500), social dissent and has documented 4091 legal cases against them; how is even 41% possible? Maybe after Jan 6th it dropped further?
If not what is it they are putting in the MRGA Kool-aid and will it cause sterility after long term consumption? So many unanswered questions…
Timothy Snyder needs to wake up to the FACT that there are soft, mentally twisted, manicured, pampered offspring od old royalty that sit in Davos every year discussing global "solutions" which is a code word for "control".
At least with just regional mafias and heavyhanded govts, you can move somewhere else. With a GLOBAL royalty class, where ya gonna go, Timothy, Pluto? Mars?
Putin's just a regional thief. WEF is global. Trump? He is just saying "keep your hands off American sovereignty!"
Just like Zelenskiy..
Maybe Europe is too precondiotioned to being under someone's thumb, historically. Maybe Davos just "feels right" to Timothy Snyder. Hard habit to break perhaps?
Sorry, millions of Americans like Trump.
Actually, Trump and Putin have little in common other than ego. Putin is a mafia thief running a "patriotic" kleptocracy using the pride of average russians as the glue to hold his wealth and legacy scam together. He sees no real value in people. They are his pawns.
Trump is just a very successful construction guy who speaks the language of the hardest working people in America. He IS a patriot, NOT a public thief, as is Putin.
So, this would make Putin and Biden synonymous. Biden has been a public thief his entire adult life, running a little family mafia, like a Mini-Me version of Putin.
@Wayne, continued...
Biden is running the WEF global serfdom program in America with the Davos kleptocrats ALL salivating over TAKING everything from industrious human beings and turning every one of us into their cash crop of human capital. Geneva is Hitler-Stalin-Mao on steroids with Herr Klaus Schwab the new dictator.
Trump and Zelenskiy could be governing the only two desirable places on Earth where anyone would want to live, AFTER Trump kicks WEF creeps out of USA and Zelenskiy kicks Putin's and WEF'a asses out of Ukraine. So many mafias, sk little time. Zelenskiy is playing WEF until he finishes Putin.
What results does history disclose about strongman rule?
Hitler murdered 6 million Jews, starved to death 5 million Russian POWs and had a plan to starve all Slavs in Ukraine so he could settle Germans on that land.
Stalin murdered maybe 700,000 other Bolsheviks. He then and starved to death some 3 million Ukrainians during collectivization. He murdered hundreds of thousands of Poles in Belarus and Ukraine. He murdered Jews.
Mao murdered between 30 and 60 million peasants in the famine he caused during the Great Leap Forward collectivization. He'd murdered 2 million during consolidation of his "revolution" in 1950 and another 2 million in the Cultural Revolution.
Read Snyder's "Black Earth" and "Bloodlands." He argues that all this was made possible by the eradication of the state. Jews weren't murdered in Germany or France. Hitler destroyed the states of Poland and Ukraine SSR, then shipped the Jews there to be murdered. There was no state to protect anyone. Eliminate the state and you can do what you want. One man rule eliminates the state. The CCP is the state in China. So is Putin. Putin doesn't have to govern for Russians. He doesn't have to govern at all. He has to guard his position. That's why he has a 50,000 man praetorian guard. That's why he went into hiding and his military didn't lift a finger when Prigozhin marched on Moscow.
Get rid of the state and you can do all this. Read Snyder. He explains a whole lot.
This article should be posted as a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post and all the other papers that US decision makers read. Not to mention wide circulation in Europe, with its own Orban and Orban wannabes. Get the premise into the right-wing media bubble however possible as well.
Snyder is so right that people think they can "try out" a strongman. As he says, you don't then get to vote him out if you don't like the results. There is no going back.
As a peer reviewed American history professor at Yale, this author has contributed a wealth of knowledge about Europe history. His sub-focus is on chronicling the path of past public empowerment and the disastrous outcomes of 'elected' dictators. I first learned of him on the United24 platform where he now sponsors a campaign to raise funds for Ukraine's drone defence systems.
This article talks about the fallacy held by some electorate in once united democracies. They believe they need a strongman leader to bring back the 'good ole days'. They inevitably elect someone who in comment / action emulates the exact traits of a dictator (ahem...putinrump, putin, orban, erdogen, fico). These psyco-deviant conmen know how to raise an angry cult following with their hate mongering words. They know how to make them tune out reason. However as the author notes: "the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance."
A dictator will always use their position for the benefit of solely themselves and their cronies. Dissent results in often life threatening penalty. Democratic rights and the tools to remove malfeasant leaders are removed (ahem....current putinrump stacked SCOTUS and state courts, MRGA plants in US Congress). The voters becomes irrelevant.
putinrump tried to overthrow the USA's democracy at the end of his legal term. Please remaining Amercans, don't support his final election. You do not want the putin'esque system he aspires towards.
Even in democratic regimes like western Europe and USA, the large capitalists or the large multinational corporations of the oil and military equipment manufactures do have some influence over the political status quo so the interests of countries and capitalists are intertwined and interlinked worldwide especially that PutinRusdia has a lot of oil , gas , wheat and gold ...The West wants to benefit financially and even economically as they support democracy and certain human values worldwide ...Why would they keep those dictators alive then ?
Perfection belongs to God ...