22 February—Following up on yesterday’s “how do people get so slavishly devoted to a dictator?” consider among other things the people’s credulity, ignorance, and just plain stupidity. And add to those intrinsic aspects—make them defects—of human nature intellectual weakness and the need for leadership (authority of any sort, as in religion), as well as the herd instinct common to virtually all species.

Dictators can be good—the rare benevolent despots—or bad—all the others, of whom there are and have been countless numbers throughout and before history. Dictators, even the benign ones, rely on fear. They’re bullies pure and simple, for good or for evil, for better or for worse.

On the other hand, as Winston Churchill commented in 1947, “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” (We don’t know whom Churchill got the comment from, by the way, but it wasn’t from any recorded source.)

On the third hand, there’s no denying that autocracy—a nice way of saying dictatorship—is a more efficient form of government than democracy. Not better, to be sure, just more efficient for the obvious reason that the decision process is simplified.

So what’s that got to do with Donald Trump? Well, he has made it clear that should he be restored to power by the credulous, ignorant, just plain stupid people (or any other way he can finagle) he’d govern in a more authoritarian way than we suffered in his previous term. And his cowardly confederates and hangers-on in Congress, state legislatures, and the streets and sewers are more than likely to support him in his evil deeds.

An authoritarian is a person who amasses power to amass still more power, often in questionable and unlawful ways. That’s Trump to a tee, ignoring the law whenever it suits him. He proclaimed that he wouldn’t be a dictator “except for day one” and “Yeah, I’d like to be dictator for a day.” Wouldn’t we all? But given Trump’s well-deserved reputation as a serial big-time liar, why should we believe the one day part? And let’s not forget that he still maintains, for whatever reasons, that he won the 2020 election despite myriad court rulings to the contrary. (But of course the courts are dead set against him, like the Russian courts against Alexei Navalny—because they’re both heroes and martyrs.)

Among other things, Trump and his band of sycophantic bullies promise (or threaten) to make it harder to protest by calling out the troops to put down civil demonstrations and invoking the Insurrection Act (like the Democrats have done against him with as yet no justification).

Trump promises to appoint a special prosecutor and use the Justice Department to “go after” Joe Biden and top people in his first (and, hopefully, only) autocratic administration who have since seen the light and/or grown balls and turned against him. (He’d doubtless include Supreme Court justices he nominated for ruling against him when the time comes.)

He wants to use the military to round up illegal immigrants from all over the country and stick them in detention (i.e., concentration) camps before deporting them; since that may be illegal, he’d divert military funds to do the dirty.

Last year, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele asked, “Do you really want to live in a country where the president of the United States is going after his political enemies?” The MAGA morons who have fallen under his evil spell would certainly say “Yes.”

Let’s just hope there are lots more voters—in the states with electoral votes that really count—who have the intelligence and common sense to say “No” . . .