If Trump Turns Tyrant, Can Others Be Far Behind?

The Wire

5 hours ago

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters while flying aboard Air Force One en route from Calgary, Canada to Joint Base Andrews, Md., late Monday, June 16, 2025. Photo: AP/PTI.
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In a much talked-about book, titled The End of History and the Last Men, 1992, Francis Fukuyama theorised that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, world history had finally found its ideological resting place in liberal democracy all over.
Looking at the world in 2025, some other equally audacious theorist might with justification write how the Spenglerian Cartwheel has returned to an older point, resuscitating dictatorships here, there, and elsewhere.
Such are the vicissitudes of scholarship, and such also the fool time and tide make of the brightest minds among us.
Donald Trump and the 'Oldest Democracy'
This colourful president has remained true to what he said during the last Presidential election in America, namely, 'I will be a dictator from day one.'
Sifting through what he has been up to since he took office again, it should be obvious that he quite unabashedly considers himself a Louis XIV reincarnate; do recall that the said French monarch who ruled the longest of any in the history of monarchies, said famously L'etat c'est moi – in plain English, 'I am the State.'
Trump's mesmerised base of course is convinced that the totalitarian exercise of Executive power by him has but one principled purpose, ergo, to 'make America great again.'
Yet, this lofty nationalist principle seems everywhere disfigured by the more real purpose of making himself rich and immortal beyond the carping grasp of principle of any kind.
Thus, he thought nothing of instigating a real insurrection on January 6, 2020, refusing to call off his hounds from their armed assault on the Capitol in Washington in order to prevent the lawful declaration of results of the Presidential election.
But, he now thinks equally nothing of dubbing a peaceful public protest against his inhuman and draconian externment drive in Los Angeles as an insurrection requiring the illegal dispatch of not just the National Guard but also the Marine Corps to quell the protest, a fundamental right inscribed in the all -important First Amendment of the Constitution which made him President.
Interestingly, in a recent press interaction where he loves to declaim with flourishes asked if he was the custodian of the Constitution, Trump replied: 'I don't know; will have to ask my lawyer.'
Quite the same on the subject of 'terrorism': Trump does not think Pakistan is less afflicted by the malaise than India; in fact, one of his army Generals has just stated how Pakistan is a 'phenomenal' partner in the fight against terrorism. One can only laugh.
Nor may it have gone unnoticed that the President of the 'oldest democracy' is today in close embrace with such Johnnies whom he once designated dangerous terrorists, such as the interim President of Syria, Ahmed al-Shaara.
While we in the so-called ('so-called' because the jury must be considered to be out on wither we are headed too) 'largest democracy' are distressingly cast down at Trump's betrayal of our interests. The King Louis knows where his bread is buttered–in the Crypto Coin hauls in Pakistan, all to the good not of the America he says he wants to make great again but of him and his clan.
The World
Thus, look where you will, except perhaps in good old Britain, a Constitutional Monarchy by definition but in truth perhaps the only reliably functioning democracy we are left with nowadays, with some European nations struggling behind – 'strong men' and some 'strong women' are vying to take control of national destinies, all in the pursuit of greatness.
So, just why would not Trump's new avatar, still endorsed by a slim majority of the American voters, be a lighthouse to guide lesser brigand ships to fuller scale assaults on the freedoms and rights highlighted by misguided elite Liberals?
Never mind that an economic recession stares the globe in the face as a consequence of policies now in process at the behest of the dictators in league with their billionaire mentors.
Also read: Modi's Toolkit for Elected Dictators Is Guide for What US Can Expect With Trump 2.0
Do not think Elon Musk has gone away for good; he will be back sooner than you say 'touche'.
Look at how our own dear Gautam Adani goes from strength to strength.
To return to the Spenglerian wheel:
It is not as though the earth has an inexhaustible capacity to do the alternating rounds between rapacious capitalism driven now by ruthless multi-billionaires now in command of the military-industrial complexes, and starry -eyed socialists who still struggle for sanity and justice.
A teleology may indeed now be in progress, but not of the theoretical/political kind that we so love to expound on.
The earth itself, ravaged beyond repair, may be close to giving up the ghost.
Think how the marauder Trump has reversed all policies and measures put in place, however meekly, by an earlier dispensation, and by well-meaning world forums, and decreed that companies can drill away wherever they want to.
Well, we may indeed be on the threshold of a drilling that will see us to the end of our earth era, returning space and time to more genuine strong species such as some new kinds of re-gened dinosaurs and mammoths. Though it is doubtful that Trump or any of our current day strong men will ride those species with success.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
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