4 January—An “elderly person sitting in [her] living room, reading the paper, and having a cup of coffee,” clearly an adept multi-tasker despite her advanced years (diligent research revealed that she’s 83), was able to write an unwittingly facetious and at the same time uncomfortably minatory letter that was published in the 1 January Republican-American. The letter went something like this:

Donald Trump isn’t a politician, doesn’t “take money from all of us,” and knows what’s going on and what he’s talking about. He’s a “smart cookie” who won’t give up, so he can’t be stopped from running. And he should be elected because the country is in terrible shape.

Everything is out of control, the elderly letter writer laments, while specifying only those things that have been hit by inflation. Trump “tells it as it is.” To the percipient writer, “everyone is afraid of him if he becomes president,” even though “we never had any of these problems when he was president.”

And “if you think it’s bad now, just wait and see. . . . Bring America back.”

That letter reflects the serious, largely legitimate concerns—and the gullibility and limitations—of Donald Trump’s base, most of whom are perfectly decent people who, for whatever reasons, can’t see the forest for the trees.

They’re the MAGA minions mesmerized by Trump’s masterful demagoguery just as post-World War I Germans were mesmerized by Adolf Hitler’s skillfully plotted and rehearsed performances. Germany at the time was in terrible shape and Hitler, like Trump, was perceived as not being a politician, was a smart cookie who was perceived to tell it like it was, wouldn’t give up, and couldn’t be stopped from running. And if you thought it was bad then, we certainly saw what happened.

Back, then, to Donald Trump, a born spoiled brat and autocratic bully who aspires now to regain the throne of the most powerful man on Earth. It looks like he very well may do it—and largely with the inadvertent, inept help of the very forces that want to prevent his candidacy, let alone his re-election to the presidency.

Virtually everything done to expose and punish world-class con-man Trump, crafty feigned paranoid aggrieved politician Trump, and arrogant womanizer Trump has accrued to his advantage. And it looks like efforts to thwart his candidacy in 2024, however well-intentioned, will be equally and sadly counterproductive and serve only to enhance the specter of his re-election. Joe Biden isn’t helping, either.

Certainly Trump is a narcissistic megalomaniac whose motivation and stability are open to question. But to give him his due, his tenure as POTUS 45 wasn’t all bad; even some things that benefited Trump also benefited other Americans, the country in general, even the world. But it’s the way he abused his exalted position of trust and his executive power that give us pause. Should he be re-elected in 2024, Donald Trump promises to be a dictator: he himself boasted that he’d be a dictator—if only for a day. Kidding on the square or promise of things to come? Yet they adore him like a messiah.

The American system of government—the Constitution—doesn’t allow or make provision for any form of dictatorship; on the contrary, the well-defined separation of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches pretty well precludes the autocratic usurpation by any one branch or individual.

For all it’s worth. Because it’s no secret that all three branches abuse their power—corporately and severally. That’s one reason we know better than to trust our government. Not that we can do much about it. Because government’s first responsibility is to protect and preserve itself. That’s the deep state that Donald Trump rails against even as he uses when it suits him and abuses it when it doesn’t.

Perhaps the most (only?) encouraging light in the darkness in the event of Donald Trump’s re-election is that dictators, even those who have been elected fairly and squarely, is that they depend on the military to support and maintain their power. And, given the way Trump has insulted and offended America’s armed services and individuals, it’s not beyond belief they’d mutiny rather than support a president who didn’t and doesn’t support them . . .