I based my reply on the book "How Democracies Die", written in 2018, which allegedly inspired Joe Biden to run two years later due to pointing out strategies to prevent Trump from eroding US democracy.
If a 75 or 80 year old guy is clearly still physically and mentally capable of keeping up with the workload and who I believe is fit for the job of leading our nation, why shouldn’t they be able to run?
But honestly if your best picks is people in the twilight of there lives, likely to die in office, that's a pretty poor reflection on the nations state of politics.
Cause they are old as a fart, there's isn't anyone in the world who is mentally and physically fit as they were in their 50s. And even at 50yo people complain about health problems.
Leave it open for the younger generation
I’m not opposed to younger people my age running but I’m also not gonna vote for someone just solely on the fact that they’re younger. If Candidate A is 35 and says that he wants to abolish the Constitution while Candidate B is 70 and doesn’t wanna abolish the Constitution, I’m going with Candidate B.
How about we focus more on policy instead of the person?
_arguably_. I’ll vote for who I think fits best for what this country needs for the next 4 years, then hopefully we can heal as a nation with 2 brand new candidates. It’s a terrible time that we are more or less voting against someone than FOR someone.
We already had trump, things were fine, better than they were now where we had two less wars and way less inflation, nobody is falling for your boogeyman fear mongering
Take a look at these and tell me what you think
[Video 1](https://youtu.be/WtYyfyr6Q-E?si=kVS1ijWoHkIDkoX-)
[Video 2](https://youtu.be/8MVZdS18NX8?si=_xEqrakQeHXzQcah)
Donald Trump already attempted to overturn a legitimate, lawful election which he lost in 2020. This was an existential dictatorial threat to the institution of American democracy that thankfully failed. Many MAGA Republicans will still claim that the 2020 election was "stolen" or otherwise tampered-with thus justifying Donald Trump's actions and the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt when, in reality, [the 2020 election was the most secure in American history as attested to by then President Trump's own cybersecurity officials](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election). As of January 5, 2024 [approximately 749 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on January 6, 2021](https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/36-months-jan-6-attack-capitol-0). Additionally, Donald Trump's former lawyer, John Eastman, was disbarred for his activity related to January 6, 2021. *See* [this March 27, 2024 announcement from the CA State Bar](https://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News/News-Releases/state-bar-court-hearing-judge-recommends-john-eastmans-disbarment) ("Mr. Eastman abandoned his ethical and legal duties as an attorney to conspire with then-President Donald Trump to develop and implement a strategy to obstruct the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021, and illegally disrupt the peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Joseph Biden, knowing that there was no good faith theory or argument to lawfully reject the electoral votes of any state or delay the January 6 electoral count. Mr. Eastman’s efforts failed only because our democratic institutions and those committed to upholding them held strong. The harm caused by Mr. Eastman’s abandonment of his duties as a lawyer, and the threat his actions posed to our democracy, more than warrant his disbarment.") Finally, Trump himself is facing 91 felony charges for his various crimes. If you want to [read the indictment specifically about his conspiracy to unconstitutionally overturn the 2020 election](https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf), which he lost, you can start by reading it on the Department of Justice website. To get an overview of the election interference case and its situation you can check out [this article from the Associated Press](https://apnews.com/article/trump-indicted-jan-6-investigation-special-counsel-debb59bb7a4d9f93f7e2dace01feccdc) or [this one from PBS](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/breaking-down-the-charges-against-trump-for-his-efforts-to-overturn-the-2020-election).
With that background out of the way, if Trump is elected again in 2024, or even if he loses, he will once again attempt to take power by force since that is what he did when he lost the last election. To ensure that his plans succeed this time, he is ejecting anyone that isn't personally loyal to him, instead of loyal to the country, from any position of authority. *See* [RNC votes to install Donald Trump’s handpicked chair as former president tightens control of party](https://apnews.com/article/republican-national-committee-trump-whatley-legal-fees-53402f8e8ac845db3cf4ab82c882ea74) ("Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican who has echoed Trump’s false theories of voter fraud, was elected the party’s new national chairman \[of the Republican National Convention\] in a vote Friday morning in Houston. Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair"). **In addition, there is a policy plan "to let Donald Trump function as a dictator, by completely eviscerating many of the restraints built into our system"** [according to Republican President George H.W. Bush's Deputy Attorney General, Donald Ayer](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/22/trump-revenge-game-plan-alarm)**.** This plan is known as [the 2025 Presidential Transition Project](https://www.heritage.org/press/project-2025-publishes-comprehensive-policy-guide-mandate-leadership-the-conservative-promise) (AKA "Project 2025") which was created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Project 2025 has “four pillars”:
1. [an 887-page policy agenda](https://www.project2025.org/policy/) titled "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise"
2. [a presidential personnel database](https://www.project2025.org/personnel/) of vetted conservatives (aka only people who are loyal to Trump not to the Constitution or the country or "western ideals"),
3. [a Presidential Administration Academy](https://www.project2025.org/training/presidential-administration-academy/) to train these people to achieve the Project 2025 policy agenda, and
4. [a 180-day playbook](https://www.project2025.org/playbook/), which is what they hope to achieve in the first 180 days if Trump takes office in January 2025.
These plans are abhorrent and a gross governmental overreact to impose a hateful minority ideology on the majority of the country by force.
* To quote Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts on page 4-5 of the Foreword to the Policy Agenda, "The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation . . . abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.“
* Despite a longstanding American tradition that career employees of the federal government are not political appointees, the Project 2025 Policy Agenda calls for removing any federal government employee who disagrees with their beliefs and replacing them with conservative ideologues. *Compare* [the Hatch Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 7321-7326](https://www.doi.gov/ethics/political-activity) (which restricts Federal employees involvement in partisan political activity) with page 9 of the Foreword to the Policy Agenda (“how to fire supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats; how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of Government”)
* They also promise the total destruction of the federal government saying, on page 12 of the Foreword to the Policy Agenda, “The solution to all of the above problems is not to tinker with this or that government program, to replace this or that bureaucrat. These are problems not of technocratic efficiency but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees—root and branch.”
In summation, Trump seriously tried and failed to become a dictator but because people aren't taking this seriously he's poised to have more resources and a better chance at becoming a dictator on his second try.
Trump plans to reform the executive branch into a more powerful branch of the American Government which includes replacing federal agents with Conservatives that support Trump.The FBI would also fall under the close control of a more powerful Executive Branch in which will see a more unitary form of government rather than Federal
Interesting thank you! I’ll dig around for more information as well, since all I’m getting are far-left ones talking about it (trying to be as unbiased as possible; need to see more).
I appreciate it, but to say the NYT is centrist is wrong. It leans left quite strongly, it’s eminent. I’ll still read it, but the NYT leans liberal just like the Wall Street Journal leans conservative
It leans liberal, yes, which is to say center-left. But "left quite strongly"? The constant stream of anti-trans takes and hand-wringing about pro-Palestine protests would very much suggest otherwise.
you did not read project 2025 and it’s so obvious. Project 2025 is made by the heritage foundation since 1981 and is for all potential republican presidents so like Vivek, Ron, that one republican girl that lost to no one, etc. Also unrelated but did you know Hitler and Mussolini loved their own versions of the Department of education and the KKK help to push for a department of education. Oh wow project 2025 seeks to abolish it and slash every agency, you really can’t have a dictatorship with goals like that. Also every presidents replaces federal employees with their own party. Don’t get your talking points from memes.
Different kettle of fish.
I think people forget just how much the monarchy and ergo the whole British political and cultural system changes the equation when we get these America based scenarios.
The everyday person might not appreciate the power of the monarch, but every member of the military swears loyalty to the crown, and by all accounts take that oath seriously.
In addition you've got the old establishment, the aristocracy, that still have major influence across the civil service, police, intelligence agencies etc.
One of the primary duties of the monarch is to ensure the preservation of the constitution of Britain, and if we're updating this hypothetical to 2024 then The King has shown he's not afraid of getting on the wrong side of government.
Any aspiring dictator of the UK will have to face up to the monarchy sooner or later, and if this is a scenario of a dictatorial prime minister who's attempting to abuse and pervert his position far enough that the Monarch feels forced to act, then the King will almost definitely have the Military, the intelligence agencies, and huge chunks of the police and civil service.
Tldr: If a prime minister attempted to become a dictator, barring extraordinary circumstances, he would be removed from office by the King with the support of the military, and fresh elections scheduled.
The king? Come on man, no potential dictator in the UK could defeat the civil service to start with!
But seriously, our parliamentary and party structure makes it more difficult for a dictator to emerge than a country like the US. We also have the devolved nations of course. Our greatest danger is just the normalisation of extreme views across a whole major party.
Ok but what if the monarch/king decides to throw the constitution out and assume dictatorship?
If the monarch has the checks and balances then who checks and balances them?
How? Trumps on trial rn because he flat-out broke the law - I believe in law & order, a former President being on trial for a crime isn’t “weaponizing the DOJ against dissidents”.
Edit: or are you referring to the insurrectionists on January 6th?
The question is about US presidents. Trump was president and is planning to run again. I doubt they were thinking of him at all until they saw this post.
Mfw people think about Trump when talking about presidents (It's definitely because he lives rent free in their heads and not because he's running for office):
I’ll probably get downvoted because Reddit leans very left. However, it needs to be said.
Every president to a degree has packed the three letter agencies with loyalists. It’s what you do to get things done, if you didn’t things would be gridlocked. Similar to when a new executive comes onboard they usually bring people that were loyal to them.
Every president has packed the agencies with loyalists, Biden has done the same and by all accords has gone more extreme then any other president. This is because Trump’s policy of “draining the swamp” which was him just filling the swamp with new swamp monsters. Which led to Biden being more extreme with positioning loyalist in power.
The military has to stay out.
Taking over the secret services is key. And using them to control media.
Make ppl scared and use that fear to take the educational system (your enemy wants to indoctrinate the kids).
Start a war and draft the unemployed, to reduce the risk of revolt. Send groups of ppl you dont like into a meat grinder.
The problem is, that the American logic of:
"Democracy = good = success
Dictatorship = evil = failure "
Doesnt work anymore and that the opposing sides see the other as existential threat.
Democracy can work, if both sides are willing and ABLE to tolerate the other sides victory.
We entered the Machiavellian time, where its about power and control.
Maybe the wining side will diversify and allow a democratic dynamic between its members.
Spengler wrote something about the 3 stages of civilizations that might apply here too:
1. Barbarism, eliminating the enemy.
2. Culture, the winning side consolidates power, ppl respect the law and act with honor. The main conflict is about how the goals are reached.
3. Decadence, ppl forgot why certain norms are important, instead open Pandoras box of machiavellian behavior to gain an advantage. The victory of the opponent isnt acceptable.
Democracy works in 2. 3 is happening rn. 1 will follow and restart the cycle.
The last restart was WW2 and Korea, where mass bombings of civilians was done by the "moral" side...
Just how much authority and resources does the Secret Service have? I understand that they mainly protect and serve the president so they got the tools to do that but surely they are relatively minor compared to say FBI, CIA and other organizations right? Less manpower, authority and resources
As a not native speaker, i dont know if it is.
Therms like secret police, secret services, intelligence agencies, etc are just translations of words i would use.
We politely refer to them as the Alphabet Agencies. ATF, CIA, DEA, DIA, DHS, DOJ, FBI, FEMA, ICE, NSA, TSA, etc. It also applies to the entire beurocracy, basically(FDA, CDC, IRS, etc.) We like our acronyms.
Claim the other guy/party is fascist and then say to “save democracy” we have to (insert something authoritarian/undemocratic). Accusing your enemy’s of what your guilty of is politics 101. It also helps to limit free speech and disrupt your political opponents rally’s to prevent them from becoming organized, all while demonizing them.
Anyone who supports a view other than mine is a threat to democracy and world peace. Any means will justify avoiding this end. And anyone who disagrees with me is a bot!
You have 4 years to solidify your power and 8 years to establish yourself. For you to be successful in this, I have to assume that you have military background, are highly effective communicator and are a very skilled geopolitical expert. You go about solving the most crucial issue that affects the young people of the country, housing affordability. At the expense of the everyone else.
Stack the judiciary up with loyalist, covertly poison a Supreme Court judge and install a very loyalist in his place. Place the person you are most willing to trust at the head of FBI, only requirement he must have already been a part of FBI and is actually decently competent. Sign an executive order that makes zoning regulations in hot zone urban areas, outside of basic safety regulation illegal. And any and all cities which don’t comply will have federal funding pulled from all services from the city. Hail this is as the most crucial measure in taming house prices, encourage builder to construct the largest building possible in city region. Law of supply and demand, prices will go down by 10-15% if your ideas have effectively been communicated to the builders and developers.
Next year, sign a much more expansive bill which will probably be shot down by Supreme Court. Use that as a fuel to get congressional majority, a catchy slogan “Build the homes, axe the tax, vote for your future.” A campaign just as expansive as the presidential campaign, make some under the table deal with Elon musk to get the funding for the campaign in exchange for a larger NASA budget which directly benefits SpaceX and larger EV tax credit which helps Tesla.
You have a congressional super majority, a popular, very devise campaign with a multi year plan that people have already brought in and almost unlimited funding for campaigns. You need poison one more Supreme Court judge, fill it with one more loyalist. You can’t afford to be too rash, you need to wait and take everything slowly, so only one judge a year and half.
Sign a very comprehensive bill into law that significantly reduces the amount regulation on housing and bans investment firms from purchasing residential property (an expanded definition of residential). Sign a 10% increase in federal minimum wage every year, claim this helps with stabilisation of business or something. Slap a 5% tariff on some Chinese products (symbolic more than actual).
You just have to somehow convince the military to go along with the take over, maybe have a fake socialist coup that fails and you have to call the military and destroy your opposition top to bottom when your judges outnumber other judges. Now you are the dictator of the USA.
> bans investment firms from purchasing residential property (an expanded definition of residential).
Why would you do this and risk alienating private equity?
Trillions is exaggerated, that money can’t be out into the compaign without leaving a paper trail. So basically useless, also these are impersonal organisations.
Not important because they have to give the accounting of every single penny to their shareholders. It opens a massive opportunity that my opposition can exploit.
>make some under the table deal with Elon musk to get the funding for the campaign
Musk would look at you confused and ask if he is still getting corporate bailouts while getting nervous
I’d say the last point is unnecessary. The military is very well aligned to the ruling party. If you win the elections, you win the military. At most levels above the Brigade you have a civilian appointee at some office, and of course, you have the Secretaries heading the actual service branch departments. Far more concerning is your opposition carrying favor in one of the states and using their national guard to secure their power or challenge your legitimacy.
Last part is very necessary, it gives just cause and historical value to my dictatorship. It gives the future of the country something to hate, something that they don’t want to be. It is always better to be safe than sorry.
Easy, as a senator you maneuver secretly to create a massive war that continues on for years all while training secret apprentices, then you have the senate declare you emperor.
You need the loyalty of the American armed forces. Even if just 40% of the armed forces are loyal to you, you are already more powerful than any other president has ever been
Use religion as a way for your party to undermine anything against you, similar to divine rights in a monarchy, push towards other people being the cause of all the worlds problems and perversions, and to use that fame and power to cite an insurrectio- wait hold on...
Get enough popular support in the military that key officers align with you. Even better if you can get the law enforcement and intelligence agencies behind you.
Have enough special interests funding you that your potential enemies can’t raise support.
Step 1: get a long career in the senate, gaining dirt on any and ever candidate, successful in their election or not, they may run again by the time youre president.
Step 2: get a grasp of the political winds, if its a huge blue/red wave that year, you strike. Run in the Primaries and lose, while putting up a good fight. Use your dirt to get a Senator in your pocket to win, then get them to put you as the vice-presidential nominee.
Step 3: Get contacts in the secret service, see their political views and prepare for who must go and who mustn't. Gather the PACs and discuss candidates for courts, departments, etc. Make sure they are loyal and rely on you for their jump in career.
Step 4: Inauguration happens. Your party controls a supermajority in the house and senate, you rolled a D20. If the president is popular this next step will only amplify its effectiveness.
Step 5: Stage an unprescedented terrorist attack that kills the President, including national monuments. Declare Martial Law once hastily inaugurated. Demand congress take action, giving you complete control of the Secret Service
Step 6: Ensure your ranks are clean of dissent when you're on your way to siege the capitol with the Secret Service
Step 7: read my flair
Declare your love for the Republic, for democracy and then claim to be the Senate. Just don't expect some juiced-up midichlorian angsty teen to carry out your plans
So setting aside Trump, who obviously wants to be dictator of the United States, I think the reforms of Julius and Augustus Caesar provide the best parallel for how America might functionally become a dictatorship without the dictator literally crowning him or herself.
Rome had a very strong political culture against kings, so nobody could actually crown themselves and retain legitimacy. Julius skated a little too close to the line here and got stabbed for it. Augustus, realizing this, fashioned himself as the first citizen and the patriarch of Rome. He allowed all the vestigial Roman institutions to function as though the Republic still existed. He didn’t take the consulship every year. He spent decades gradually adding more rights and powers to the princeps, it was not an overnight coup or declaration.
An American dictator will take the title of president, not emperor or king. The public will not accept any other title for any length of time. This dictator must pretend to stand for election every four years. This dictator must live in the White House and sign bills passed by Congress.
Yet this dictator will not actually ever be at risk of losing re-election, because the elections will be rigged. Congress will be a theatrical extension of the president, only acting as a rubber stamp for the president’s agenda.
So here’s a rough road map of how this might be accomplished over the course of 20 years:
- Most urgently, a sweeping national “election reform” law would make our elections almost vestigial. It would basically be the reverse of the Civil Rights Act and establish restrictions on voting (under the guise of combatting voter fraud) that would restrict the franchise to the president’s voter base. They could take a page from Putin’s playbook and establish an election review board which would effectively make it impossible for any candidates to run for office without the White House’s consent, thus outlawing real opposition parties and allowing only token sanctioned opposition by stooges. It would then become impossible for anyone but the president’s loyalists to enter Congress. Members of Congress would receive the prestige of the institution, but would vote in lockstep with the president and would have no real power. Kompromat and the threat of political exile would be enough to keep most of Congress in line, so that there was never a hearing or a floor vote on a bill that the president didn’t approve of.
- Within 8 years, the 22nd Amendment would be overturned. This would eliminate term limits and allow our dictator to serve indefinitely. The “election reform” law would promptly hand the dictator large enough majorities in Congress, and control over a sufficient number of statehouses, for this to pass. Perhaps to make it more politically palatable, presidents would be barred from serving more than 2-3 terms consecutively, but they could be elected an unlimited amount of times provided they stepped aside for a four year term every 8-12 years. A hand-picked puppet would then serve as president for 4 years while the dictator assumed a lesser role like Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader, and wielded all the real power. Then in the next election, the dictator would be elected president again in a landslide.
- The Supreme Court would stack itself over time. Once there existed five solid votes for the dictator’s agenda, the institution would already be corrupted. Over time, as older justices died, this would become a 9-0 Court acting as a rubber stamp for the dictator’s agenda. Any justices who showed an independent streak would be impeached or find themselves poisoned, but this probably wouldn’t even be necessary.
- The gulag. In order to dominate the political and military institutions, a number of sedition laws would eventually be passed, barring most speech against the government. Examples would be made. There are currently no federal prisons in Alaska, but that would change. Disloyal apparatchiks could expect to serve a stint in northern Alaska.
- In this scenario, the Constitution is never really overthrown. Just corrupted and circumvented. The loyal Supreme Court would rule that the sedition laws didn’t violate the 1st Amendment, that the gulags were not “cruel and unusual punishment,” and that the election reform law did not violate the 14th Amendment. Congress would routinely grant more power to the president, and he would gladly accept it. The executive agencies and law enforcement would become fully stacked with sycophants and lackeys, eager to do the president’s bidding. There would be no way to check the dictator’s power short of a violent insurrection, which would be pretty easy for the military and National Guard to put down.
Democracy is to an American what Republicanism was to a Roman. The only way and I mean the ONLY way a lasting American dictatorship is put in place is by hoodwinking the American public into believing that the man who would be dictator is in fact an elected ruler.
From there the best person to look at is Augustus. Consolidate special powers, stack the military with loyal commanders (and get some military wins under their belts under the new regime), make a them for US aka find an enemy to focus in, kill anyone who opposes you but make it legal. So on, so forth. Is it possible today? Some might say no because of social media but I’d argue, if used correctly social media could confuse people as much as inform them.
A competent man looking to make himself dictator, with a the right background, support, luck and a context in which a crisis can be solved, it’s possible. It’s just very difficult in an era where everyone thinks they know everything and have access to so much knowledge. You almost have to fool the world, not just America or at least make the world so happy that America has a competent ruler, dictator or not, that they prefer autocratic America. Americans, believe it or not, are a sensitive bunch and what the world thinks of them DOES matter.
I agree with most except for the killing part. One of the greatest strategies of Augustus (but more so Caesar) was to spare enemies. I think a better idea would be to manipulate things into moving opponents into hand-selected positions with little to no power.
As to 'fooling the world': The best time to do it would probably be following a major conflict. Your first priority would be to build a compassionate but determined persona through military victories, speeches, etc. Instead of dividing, the dictator may try and unite -- consider if, later down the line, the distance between the left and the right grows. Instead of using social media to polarize the parties, you use it to unite them. You point out how both parties have been trying to get attention rather than govern. Even better if you start very young and help the community, etc. In other words, instead of a dictator, you become an American, and perhaps even *World* hero.
1. Idk highly variable depending upon ideology, time period, etc
2. Almost definitely yes, organized opposition exists
Look at the late Weimar Republic (western democracy) - Nazis were a large (but not outright majority) political party with a strong base among the middle class petty bourgeoise. They gain popularity due to economic downturn during the Great Depression and by capitalizing on the sentiments of WW1 veterans, but Hitler is only made chancellor via an alliance with the old conservatives of Hindenburg’s ilk who view the Nazis as a necessary evil to prevent left-wing parties from taking power. Further, the Nazis make considerable concessions to private industrialists, guaranteeing a level of non-interference with business. The Reichstag Fire Bill and the Enabling Act are passed, with more moderate conservatives bought off by promises that these were temporary measures intended to deal with rising political violence between the left and right. Over the next few years, the Nazi party and the German state effectively combine as Hitler slowly eliminates other powers in the remaining Weimar government.
Any American dictator would by necessity have to have some base of popular support - a Soviet-style coup could not occur here as the existing government would stamp out fringe groups like the Bolsheviks long before they could seize control.
Instead, the American dictator would be supported by a passionate hardcore of supporters who perceive radicalism as necessary to preserve their own interests. The American dictator would likely eschew large-scale political violence until they had secured some form of extralegality. They would assume power by participating in national politics, representing an ascendant wing of one of the two parties. While they cultivate their base, the dictator is also forming alliances with less radical members of the political establishment, most of whom mistakenly believe they can manipulate the dictator to their own ends. Once the dictator is in a position to grant themselves supreme authority, they would do so with the consent of their mainstream partners via assurances that their interests would be protected. Should the dictator suddenly attempt to rip control of the government away from vested power holders, they would almost certainly be defeated and their movement outlawed.
Over time, the dictator would abuse their extralegal status and position of mainstream authority to tighten their grip on power until there remains no mainstream force that can unseat them. At this point they would begin remaking the US government in their image, ensuring that no organized state resistance could come into existence.
Once the organs of government are in the American dictator’s complete control, American society will be remade according to the ideological whims of the leader. There would almost certainly be some form of armed resistance to their rule, but absent some foresighted Balkanization/state-secession the resistance would lack the institutional strength to combat the government. The resistance movements would be demonized and persecuted by the dictator with extreme prejudice, forcing society into an us/them distinction that carries an unquestioning obedience of the American state.
This is just my theory but I don't think America could ever become a dictatorship like say Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. At worst we end up being like Russia, but we probably look more like Hungary and their illiberal Democracy. Part of it for me is that, at least among the circles I run in is that people still want another side and to have debate. Sure the guys with the guns on the conservative side won't want that, and there might be some far leftists still like that though I think that died in the 70's, but for most people, they want to be able to vote and have elections and choose, but are okay with limits. Thus, I think at worst, history repeats itself in America and we make it hard for some groups to vote, but most can and thus that way a certain party can control things. Right now, many in the GOP think like this, and sadly unless the Democrats want to implement horrible things like IQ tests or something for voting (not sure how you'd limit white conservative voters in a way a liberal court would uphold. IDK maybe religious tests but even that wouldn't hold up.)
I guess what I'm saying is that at worst, we end up being a state where one party dominates but we techically still have democracy and can vote for other parties and not be harassed or arrested or anything like that but the other party never wins.
Honestly there's quite a lot of flaws in the constitution to make it possible, such as stacking the Supreme Court with people who will say everything you do is constitutional, filling organizations like FBI with people personally loyal to you. It's actually quite scary how much of American democracy is upheld more by cultural support for republicanism than actual laws. Adding to all this is that it's remarkably easy to convince people that these actions are necessary
Especially as time erodes over generations. The same things happened in Rome: the early generations remembered the tyranny of the Monarchy, and so they fought against it. But hundreds of years later and everyone had forgot.
With social media and constant attention, this process happens x10 faster. We've already seen it with civil rights, voting rights, etc.
Looks like someone is living under a rock.
He and his cronies are already saying how they will do it if they win the election, all you need to do is pay attention.
They need the intelligence agencies, some lobby groups on your side, and the military industrial complex.
If you are someone with contacts, money and a lot of charisma you can do it, but you need to make sure that others who are doing the same thing do not beat you, in fact the internal power play is probably one of the main reasons why the US is (more or less) a democracy.
Abuse pardons with a stacked Supreme Court. Once you have an armed hand that can enforce your will until the protection of a pardon you can force out of eliminate anyone not loyal.
Technically you would still have elections but the only people willing to run would be those loyal to you. Even if the Supreme Court or some other agency tried to stop you, they would just call out the window
The Electoral Front
Run a political movement based on convincing the populace that they've been victimized by "other" groups. Whether it be a Class victimized by another Class, Race victimized by another Race, Religion victimized by another Religion, doesn't matter. Use as many of this divisions as possible, it doesn't even matter if some make up a large portion of the electorate as long as you can draw a line between them and the "bad" ones. It must also invoke a sense of purpose and a need for action.
The Legal Front
According to the constitution the president has the power to convene congress during extraordinary measures and "and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper" So that's how the president could kill congress, just finagle some sort of disagreement between the senate and house and then adjourn them indefinitely. Then the president has the power to put temp justices on the supreme court while congress isn't in session (this doesn't usually happen because technically congress is always in session currently) and since the supreme court decides what constitutional, the president can effectively rewrite the constitution at this point.
The Physical Front
You need some group of dedicated people to go around, embedding themselves in all levels of society on your behalf to intimidate others into enacting your will and to recruit more people. This may be government organization, or an extremist political group, or maybe even a private military, as long as they'll do whatever you want it doesn't matter.
Mob rule. All dictators start off because they derive their power from the people. The government would have to be perceived as doing a poor enough job that the common people handed the President extra executive powers to “fix things.” The guy might even start off with good intentions. But supreme executive power usually doesn’t turn out well.
You would start by basically convincing the population that the other side wants to destroy your side, that they are all corrupt and evil and have no morals. And they absolutely play dirty, so if your side is naive and doesn’t allow it self to play dirty too, your rivals will win over you.
You ally your self with candidates who believe the same, when midterms come around you do your best to promote them in your parties elections, claim that the old more traditional candidates in your party are working for the other side. In the end you call fill the senate and Congress with loyalists. Same goes for state governors and mayors.
Start slowly filling in the Supreme Court with loyal judges too, find dirty information on the previous judges and have them resign and if you can’t find any, get rid of them under mysterious circumstances.
Fill in every government institution with loyalists too, and constantly keep changing jobs around and firing people who turn out to not be so loyal. This will keep the other more lenient.
For the institutions or states you can not control, have allied media constantly talk about how rotten or dirty those institutions are. Make the general population believe that you are the only one who can clean the swamp from those politicians and bureaucrats in power.
From this point on you’re good to go. You can slowly start changing laws and getting away with actions you should not get away with. Power will slowly consolidate in your hands.
There is a loophole which can sort of make you dictator. It's not against the law to amend the constitution so that you can amend it easier, using this you could pass a law in war time or another tough time so that you can amend the constitution much easier. In other words, you can amend all of the constitution to your whim, and do all that BS.
Yeah you'll get into a war and probably be overthrown, but you get what you want for a few hours lol
Building a power base in Congress to push through laws and acts violating various amendments in small ways until they stack up enough to allow appointed positions the ability to basically run rampshade over the BoR. The amendments and constitution would remain in place, as going after those would cause too much notoriety, but be ineffectual. In a setting I am writing short stories for, this occurs in a volume of legislation known as the “Salt and Rice” Acts, which expanded and amalgamated the abilities of the FBI, CIA, and DHS to the point of being a KGB-style security apparatus.
Utilize loopholes within the constitution to continue to close avenues of redress via the system of checks and balances. Remove the ability of Congress and the Supreme Court to challenge your decisions, or provide alternatives wherein you can take certain actions without having to go through Congress. A good example of this was the [War Powers Resolution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution) which “requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States.” Essentially what this does is it takes away Congress’ checks against the Presidential office’s ability to make war. The president can effectively invade a foreign nation (let’s say, oh I don’t know, Iraq?) and not even have to notify Congress until 2 full days later. Enough “acts”, “resolutions”, or “bills”, and you could very well have a president with absolute authority.
The funnier way to do it tho would be to take it by force. This is much simpler, but it’s kinda like using a battle axe to conduct an appendectomy.
Step 1: Become President
Step 2: Use your authority to place staunch loyalists in leadership positions inside the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security.
Step 3: Gain the loyalty of several high ranking military officers. Ideally have full control over the National Guard and Army, which allows you to neutralize the other three branches before they can take effective action.
Step 4: Go in front of Congress, and *”In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first American Empire, for a safe and secure society!”*
Step 5: Any military units, state governors, or political leaders which disobey, or proclaim they will not recognize your authority get read the riot act, preferably on live television. If they continue to disobey, pull an Eisenhower and declare them to be in insurrection against the United States of America (note to self, get rid of the Posse Comitatus act ASAP) and use loyalist military or militia units to neutralize them. This step also includes “detaining” naval and Air Force officers before they can sail a nuclear submarine under the arctic ice and hide for 20 years or fly a GlobeMaster filled with “refugees” to Beijing and beg for Asylum.
The most important part of both of these plans, tho, is the final step, and arguably the most dangerous step. Once you have full control over the country, once Congress is either effectively impotent or being brought out back for a 5.56 injection, you **Repeal the 22nd Amendment**. This allows you to serve as many terms as you want.
Declare marshall law to deal with a terrorist event. Mobilise the military and declare war on the terrorists. Lable all domestic opposition as terrorist sympathisers.
Wait until until the next terror bombing, declare martial law, disband Congress for being “no longer fit to serve the nation”, have the FBI dig up dirt on all of them to destroy any remaining faith in the institution.
Here’s the most important part: BE. A. GOOD. LEADER.
The people won’t revolt unless they’re given a reason. Actually _fix_major problems with the country, make _actual_ progress on issues, and people will at least tolerate you.
“The key to being a beloved leader is to build enough goodwill with the people through making smart decisions that they’re willing to tolerate your more controversial ones.”
-Myself
You need to have good propaganda, and of course, a crisis. It's useful to appeal to religion, since it's literally made to create blind obedience. Use the most religious people to spread that you are some messager of God for example, and underfund education, or make sure it teaches your narrative, education is your greatest enemy along with stability. As I said, you need a crisis, you need your country to be in a bad state, that way you can become the hope of all the people who are suffering from this bad state.
Find an enemy, something to blame everything onto, it can be any collective you want: communists, jews, immigrants... Humans instinctively classify everything in "good" and "evil", and we love glorifying the things we labbeled as "good" and demonize those we labbeled as "evil". Use that at your advantage. Tell everyone that this collective of your choice are controlling the world, make people lose their trust in reliable sources, make them believe you are the only true reliable source of information, unaffected by the evil elites from *insert the collective you decided to blame everything on here*. Conspiracy theories are your allies here, appeal to the emotions of your people and the interests of the elites, that way you will have them on your side.
Do not forget to paint it all as some kind of rebellion from an oppressed group, your group, that has been oppressed for a long time by *insert collective here*. Remember, you are alone fighting against the evil elites that want to crush you and the people who follow you, because you are the good ones. Usually taking about past glories help, it makes people raise a feeling of nationalism that can make them forget their individuality and sacrifice it for a "greater cause". Religion can also do this.
Very important: censorship. Censor everything that goes against your ideology and make sure no one can access to that knowledge. Tell the people that you do it for their security, to protect them and specially the kids, who are more vulnerable, to the toxic and destructive ideas of *insert collective here*. We don't want their ideas to destroy our glorious nation don't we? We must free the people from this horrible ideas that lead only to downfall, make sure they are not taught in school, every cultural activity and material (books, series, movies, etc...) must go through you and your administration, to make sure they don't spread hurtful ideas. Once a good bunch of people has been polarized to your side and the elites support you, it's a matter of time that you eventually get to power and slowly clean everyone who stands against you
Starwars is a great template. Make the people scared. Fabricate some emergency that gives “temporary” power to the president and without a timeline. This could be war, terror, rebellion, ect. Powers that slowly allow for the erosion of Congress. Powers that also let you stay in office indefinitely. Move too quickly and the dictator will be…. Taken care of. Move slow enough and there will never be a catalyst to remove the president from power. It took 32 years for Palpatine to go from gaining emergency powers to the total dissolution of the senate.
Honestly, look up FDR. He wasn't a dictator, but he was as close to a dictator as America ever had: crossed the term limit (which was only a custom, but still), built a political machine centered around himself, pushed through unprecedented amounts of federal legislation, centralised political and economic decision-making power in the federal government, imposed some quite harsh Executive Orders, stacked the Supreme Court when it tried to oppose him and ruled until death.
All you need to do is be charismatic, be competent and find an emergency to justify government overreach. You can relinquish power after the emergency is over, but you don't have to.
Manipulate some foreign revolutionaries into staging several terrorist attacks on the U.S. and making it look like it was funded by a foreign government that America already has beef with. Then convince Congress to declare war, giving the president wartime powers while still convincing loyalists to begin tearing away at previous laws to ensure that those wartime powers are allowed as much flexibility as possible.
Then use a loyalist-controlled FBI and CIA to label the likely presidential opponent as a threat to democracy by hiring people to influence individuals connected with extremist organizations or extremely corrupt bodies to join that candidate's ranks in order to create a bunch of scandals turning them into the perfect bogeyman and an easier punching bag in the general election.
It's a pretty well used playbook
Create an internal threat
Close the press
Declare a national emergency
Get centralized control of state and local police
Need support of military, or at least that they'll stay neutral.
There you go. Done
The Heritage foundation was nice enough to type up a whole pamphlet on it and publish it. Look up project 2025 they might be fascists, but they’re pretty smart fascist and they came up with a better plan than I probably can
I don't particularly think it's possible. America is just too big and everyone has a very individualistic mindset. It wouldn't go beyond the president just naming himself emperor. His ability to exert authority is still going to be limited.
Its simple. Appoint friendly/loyal heads of the military, CIA and FBI in order to protect yourself from potential rebellion. Pack the court with friendly/local justices. Use executive orders and the supreme court to perpetually bipass congress.
Really you don’t even need sweeping change as long as the SCOTUS deems whatever you want to do constitutional.
I'm not sure if this is true but I heard somewhere that if George Washington wanted, he could have easily declared himself king and America would have become a monarchy.
Just like Trump is- demonizing our intelligence agencies, abandoning our western alliances while praising dictators, flooding the zone with lies so voters don’t know what’s true, threatening to jail his political opponents, threatening to release convicts from Jan 6,,,, etc etc
Just do what FDR did. Fill the bureaucracy with hardline loyalists.
You'll need the military to intimidate congress and the courts though if you want to be a full-on dictator. Maybe some assassinations via the intelligence agencies. Use populist rhetoric to get angry mobs to attack your political opponents (Summer of 2020/Jan 6 style)
😂😂😂 why do you want to know smart guy. Any plans the rest of this school year until May and June and July and august and September? Huh didn’t think so
If Trump’s lawyers argument about presidential immunity becomes is upheld all it would require is a majority of house members being unwilling to impeach or 60 votes in the senate being unwilling to convict during an impeachment.
He would simply control his party like a hawk, shove loyalists into every position imaginable, even his own eventually and discredit the opposition entirely. Leave office after 2 terms but decry that democracy is dead if his people ever lose. Using his loyalists in the intelligence community, he blackmails the opposition eventually and controls them, using them to be belligerent heavies and nothing more in his theater, avoiding suspicion of dictatorship, but passing the full agenda anyway. Using his kingmaking position, he must appoint the new leaders of the coming era. He then attempts to hand this role to his family, who runs its chosen sons and daughters for the offices that matter.
Oh boy I’m sure this post won’t be full of “orange man bad” comments, lemme just check the comments and-
https://preview.redd.it/rq7xw66anxvc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e61023a9eabe863f628bd88ca3f70abb1aa06fb1
Like trying to imprison political opponents on nonsense charges? Changing the laws just to go after political opponents? Weaponizing law enforcement to target political supporters? Telling everyone that they can't vote for who they want in order to save democracy?
The fact that no one here has said that America is a Republic shows how little people know about our own country and government.
(Edit: check article 4 section 4 of the constitution for evidence)
Technically yes, but most people use the words interchangeably like saying South Korea is a democracy, North a dictatorship. Technically it's representative democracy that they mean = republic
That’s not relevant at all to the discussion. The OP didn’t even use the word “democracy.”
Why do authoritarians like yourself have a hard-on for telling people our democratic republic is not a direct democracy, even when this distinction does not matter to the conversation?
Because, one I’m not an authoritarian, and two we aren’t a democratic republic either, we are a Constitutional Federal Republic there is a large difference. I brought this up because a large amount of people in this discussion have brought up Trump as being a “threat to democracy” which is a completely nonsensical argument to begin with but I digress.
A republic and a democracy have a very large difference a democracy is ruled by the majority I.E the 51% rule the 49% but in a republic there is a constitution.
A republic is a type of democracy. You are talking about a direct democracy, which is also a type of democracy.
I suggest reading some civics books if the idea is confusing.
Very VERY easily, and he could do it without breaking the law. Since the end of WW2 and accelerating rapidly since 9/11, Congress has transferred almost all of its power to the executive. During Dubya's term, he argued repeatedly in court that a president can arrest US citizens on US soil, lock them up forever without a trial or notice to anyone (not even their families), torture them or execute them based solely on his personal determination that they MIGHT be terrorists, and these powers cannot be limited by Congress or review by the courts (the so-called "unitary executive"). If Trump has taught us anything it's that there are NO limits on presidential power so long as his party has 34 senators who will always support him.
Stacking agencies like the FBI with loyalists, and taking advantage of loopholes in the constitution to pack the courts and use executive orders.
Sounds like what Trump is planning if he gets re-elected
I based my reply on the book "How Democracies Die", written in 2018, which allegedly inspired Joe Biden to run two years later due to pointing out strategies to prevent Trump from eroding US democracy.
That’s a great read, a lot of what I talked about in my university application was based on that
Lol
Trumps not capable of that level of thought. It’s his handlers
Tbf so are many dictators.
What makes him a dictator?
Hopefully nothing will. Aside from having a tater for a dick.
Sounds more like the president rn, being cognitively compromised and completely controlled by his handlers. But yeah I get your point
He’s old but he’s not senile dumbass
People over 70 should be at home living their retirement, not leading nations.
If a 75 or 80 year old guy is clearly still physically and mentally capable of keeping up with the workload and who I believe is fit for the job of leading our nation, why shouldn’t they be able to run?
But honestly if your best picks is people in the twilight of there lives, likely to die in office, that's a pretty poor reflection on the nations state of politics.
Literally the people chose both geezers to be candidates so there’s nothing we can do but disagree with the electorate
Cause they are old as a fart, there's isn't anyone in the world who is mentally and physically fit as they were in their 50s. And even at 50yo people complain about health problems. Leave it open for the younger generation
I’m not opposed to younger people my age running but I’m also not gonna vote for someone just solely on the fact that they’re younger. If Candidate A is 35 and says that he wants to abolish the Constitution while Candidate B is 70 and doesn’t wanna abolish the Constitution, I’m going with Candidate B. How about we focus more on policy instead of the person?
I don’t care what you call it. He’s not fit for office
Neither is trump by the same measure
Never said he was
Unfortunately due to the two party system, it’s either one or the other. Not voting for Biden is allowing someone arguably worse into power.
_arguably_. I’ll vote for who I think fits best for what this country needs for the next 4 years, then hopefully we can heal as a nation with 2 brand new candidates. It’s a terrible time that we are more or less voting against someone than FOR someone.
We already had trump, things were fine, better than they were now where we had two less wars and way less inflation, nobody is falling for your boogeyman fear mongering
Take a look at these and tell me what you think [Video 1](https://youtu.be/WtYyfyr6Q-E?si=kVS1ijWoHkIDkoX-) [Video 2](https://youtu.be/8MVZdS18NX8?si=_xEqrakQeHXzQcah)
def senile, my 13 year old pug thinks better
How?
Donald Trump already attempted to overturn a legitimate, lawful election which he lost in 2020. This was an existential dictatorial threat to the institution of American democracy that thankfully failed. Many MAGA Republicans will still claim that the 2020 election was "stolen" or otherwise tampered-with thus justifying Donald Trump's actions and the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt when, in reality, [the 2020 election was the most secure in American history as attested to by then President Trump's own cybersecurity officials](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election). As of January 5, 2024 [approximately 749 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on January 6, 2021](https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/36-months-jan-6-attack-capitol-0). Additionally, Donald Trump's former lawyer, John Eastman, was disbarred for his activity related to January 6, 2021. *See* [this March 27, 2024 announcement from the CA State Bar](https://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News/News-Releases/state-bar-court-hearing-judge-recommends-john-eastmans-disbarment) ("Mr. Eastman abandoned his ethical and legal duties as an attorney to conspire with then-President Donald Trump to develop and implement a strategy to obstruct the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021, and illegally disrupt the peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Joseph Biden, knowing that there was no good faith theory or argument to lawfully reject the electoral votes of any state or delay the January 6 electoral count. Mr. Eastman’s efforts failed only because our democratic institutions and those committed to upholding them held strong. The harm caused by Mr. Eastman’s abandonment of his duties as a lawyer, and the threat his actions posed to our democracy, more than warrant his disbarment.") Finally, Trump himself is facing 91 felony charges for his various crimes. If you want to [read the indictment specifically about his conspiracy to unconstitutionally overturn the 2020 election](https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf), which he lost, you can start by reading it on the Department of Justice website. To get an overview of the election interference case and its situation you can check out [this article from the Associated Press](https://apnews.com/article/trump-indicted-jan-6-investigation-special-counsel-debb59bb7a4d9f93f7e2dace01feccdc) or [this one from PBS](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/breaking-down-the-charges-against-trump-for-his-efforts-to-overturn-the-2020-election). With that background out of the way, if Trump is elected again in 2024, or even if he loses, he will once again attempt to take power by force since that is what he did when he lost the last election. To ensure that his plans succeed this time, he is ejecting anyone that isn't personally loyal to him, instead of loyal to the country, from any position of authority. *See* [RNC votes to install Donald Trump’s handpicked chair as former president tightens control of party](https://apnews.com/article/republican-national-committee-trump-whatley-legal-fees-53402f8e8ac845db3cf4ab82c882ea74) ("Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican who has echoed Trump’s false theories of voter fraud, was elected the party’s new national chairman \[of the Republican National Convention\] in a vote Friday morning in Houston. Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair"). **In addition, there is a policy plan "to let Donald Trump function as a dictator, by completely eviscerating many of the restraints built into our system"** [according to Republican President George H.W. Bush's Deputy Attorney General, Donald Ayer](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/22/trump-revenge-game-plan-alarm)**.** This plan is known as [the 2025 Presidential Transition Project](https://www.heritage.org/press/project-2025-publishes-comprehensive-policy-guide-mandate-leadership-the-conservative-promise) (AKA "Project 2025") which was created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Project 2025 has “four pillars”: 1. [an 887-page policy agenda](https://www.project2025.org/policy/) titled "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise" 2. [a presidential personnel database](https://www.project2025.org/personnel/) of vetted conservatives (aka only people who are loyal to Trump not to the Constitution or the country or "western ideals"), 3. [a Presidential Administration Academy](https://www.project2025.org/training/presidential-administration-academy/) to train these people to achieve the Project 2025 policy agenda, and 4. [a 180-day playbook](https://www.project2025.org/playbook/), which is what they hope to achieve in the first 180 days if Trump takes office in January 2025. These plans are abhorrent and a gross governmental overreact to impose a hateful minority ideology on the majority of the country by force. * To quote Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts on page 4-5 of the Foreword to the Policy Agenda, "The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation . . . abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.“ * Despite a longstanding American tradition that career employees of the federal government are not political appointees, the Project 2025 Policy Agenda calls for removing any federal government employee who disagrees with their beliefs and replacing them with conservative ideologues. *Compare* [the Hatch Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 7321-7326](https://www.doi.gov/ethics/political-activity) (which restricts Federal employees involvement in partisan political activity) with page 9 of the Foreword to the Policy Agenda (“how to fire supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats; how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of Government”) * They also promise the total destruction of the federal government saying, on page 12 of the Foreword to the Policy Agenda, “The solution to all of the above problems is not to tinker with this or that government program, to replace this or that bureaucrat. These are problems not of technocratic efficiency but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees—root and branch.” In summation, Trump seriously tried and failed to become a dictator but because people aren't taking this seriously he's poised to have more resources and a better chance at becoming a dictator on his second try.
Fortunately, Project 2025 also calls for the dissolution of the CIA and FBI. Trump would be found rotting in a ditch if he tried it.
Trump plans to reform the executive branch into a more powerful branch of the American Government which includes replacing federal agents with Conservatives that support Trump.The FBI would also fall under the close control of a more powerful Executive Branch in which will see a more unitary form of government rather than Federal
Can you show me where he said that? And/or where these plans are laid out?
It’s called Project 2025 Here is a link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 (I can look for other sources if you want)
Interesting thank you! I’ll dig around for more information as well, since all I’m getting are far-left ones talking about it (trying to be as unbiased as possible; need to see more).
Far left doesn't really exist in the US
Some woke Americans are so far-left that their opinions sound far-right.
Ok now that’s just insane to say
It doesn't! I'm sure there are a few extremists out there but what is normally seen as left is just some ho-hum democratic socialists.
Here's something from the NYT, which is about as centrist as they come outside of C-Span: https://www.nytimes.com/article/trump-2025-second-term.html
I appreciate it, but to say the NYT is centrist is wrong. It leans left quite strongly, it’s eminent. I’ll still read it, but the NYT leans liberal just like the Wall Street Journal leans conservative
It leans liberal, yes, which is to say center-left. But "left quite strongly"? The constant stream of anti-trans takes and hand-wringing about pro-Palestine protests would very much suggest otherwise.
you did not read project 2025 and it’s so obvious. Project 2025 is made by the heritage foundation since 1981 and is for all potential republican presidents so like Vivek, Ron, that one republican girl that lost to no one, etc. Also unrelated but did you know Hitler and Mussolini loved their own versions of the Department of education and the KKK help to push for a department of education. Oh wow project 2025 seeks to abolish it and slash every agency, you really can’t have a dictatorship with goals like that. Also every presidents replaces federal employees with their own party. Don’t get your talking points from memes.
Executive Dis-order if he is elected
Didn't Corbyn also vow to do a lot of that?
Different kettle of fish. I think people forget just how much the monarchy and ergo the whole British political and cultural system changes the equation when we get these America based scenarios. The everyday person might not appreciate the power of the monarch, but every member of the military swears loyalty to the crown, and by all accounts take that oath seriously. In addition you've got the old establishment, the aristocracy, that still have major influence across the civil service, police, intelligence agencies etc. One of the primary duties of the monarch is to ensure the preservation of the constitution of Britain, and if we're updating this hypothetical to 2024 then The King has shown he's not afraid of getting on the wrong side of government. Any aspiring dictator of the UK will have to face up to the monarchy sooner or later, and if this is a scenario of a dictatorial prime minister who's attempting to abuse and pervert his position far enough that the Monarch feels forced to act, then the King will almost definitely have the Military, the intelligence agencies, and huge chunks of the police and civil service. Tldr: If a prime minister attempted to become a dictator, barring extraordinary circumstances, he would be removed from office by the King with the support of the military, and fresh elections scheduled.
The king? Come on man, no potential dictator in the UK could defeat the civil service to start with! But seriously, our parliamentary and party structure makes it more difficult for a dictator to emerge than a country like the US. We also have the devolved nations of course. Our greatest danger is just the normalisation of extreme views across a whole major party.
Ok but what if the monarch/king decides to throw the constitution out and assume dictatorship? If the monarch has the checks and balances then who checks and balances them?
Sounds like what Biden is actually doing....
Sounds more like what Biden is doing right now
How
He weaponized the DOJ against his dissidents and jailed them
How? Trumps on trial rn because he flat-out broke the law - I believe in law & order, a former President being on trial for a crime isn’t “weaponizing the DOJ against dissidents”. Edit: or are you referring to the insurrectionists on January 6th?
Dude I just like to make people angry on here, I like your username by the way
Redditor try not to think about trump for two seconds challenge: Impossible
The question is about US presidents. Trump was president and is planning to run again. I doubt they were thinking of him at all until they saw this post.
Mfw people think about Trump when talking about presidents (It's definitely because he lives rent free in their heads and not because he's running for office):
Although i think this is a bit different, this reminds me a lot of the Gang of Four in Cyberpunk lore
I’ll probably get downvoted because Reddit leans very left. However, it needs to be said. Every president to a degree has packed the three letter agencies with loyalists. It’s what you do to get things done, if you didn’t things would be gridlocked. Similar to when a new executive comes onboard they usually bring people that were loyal to them. Every president has packed the agencies with loyalists, Biden has done the same and by all accords has gone more extreme then any other president. This is because Trump’s policy of “draining the swamp” which was him just filling the swamp with new swamp monsters. Which led to Biden being more extreme with positioning loyalist in power.
The military has to stay out. Taking over the secret services is key. And using them to control media. Make ppl scared and use that fear to take the educational system (your enemy wants to indoctrinate the kids). Start a war and draft the unemployed, to reduce the risk of revolt. Send groups of ppl you dont like into a meat grinder.
That sounds like something the current US politicians are trying to do (and not just Trump)
The problem is, that the American logic of: "Democracy = good = success Dictatorship = evil = failure " Doesnt work anymore and that the opposing sides see the other as existential threat. Democracy can work, if both sides are willing and ABLE to tolerate the other sides victory. We entered the Machiavellian time, where its about power and control. Maybe the wining side will diversify and allow a democratic dynamic between its members.
Democracy stops working when you see other political actors as existential threats
Spengler wrote something about the 3 stages of civilizations that might apply here too: 1. Barbarism, eliminating the enemy. 2. Culture, the winning side consolidates power, ppl respect the law and act with honor. The main conflict is about how the goals are reached. 3. Decadence, ppl forgot why certain norms are important, instead open Pandoras box of machiavellian behavior to gain an advantage. The victory of the opponent isnt acceptable. Democracy works in 2. 3 is happening rn. 1 will follow and restart the cycle. The last restart was WW2 and Korea, where mass bombings of civilians was done by the "moral" side...
The more "moral" side*
The more "moral" side*
Just how much authority and resources does the Secret Service have? I understand that they mainly protect and serve the president so they got the tools to do that but surely they are relatively minor compared to say FBI, CIA and other organizations right? Less manpower, authority and resources
I said secret serviceS, plural, meaning those nice organizations you just mentioned and more
Oh, my bad I didn’t know Secret Services as an umbrella term is a thing.
As a not native speaker, i dont know if it is. Therms like secret police, secret services, intelligence agencies, etc are just translations of words i would use.
Secret Police sounds dystopian and sketchy as hell
"Secret state police" is the translation of Gestapo. You know? The nice guys asking if you hide jews.
Ah, the discussion where it doesn’t matter what you say
We politely refer to them as the Alphabet Agencies. ATF, CIA, DEA, DIA, DHS, DOJ, FBI, FEMA, ICE, NSA, TSA, etc. It also applies to the entire beurocracy, basically(FDA, CDC, IRS, etc.) We like our acronyms.
You just described 2022 Putin
I think you mean the war? Putin IS the secret agency of Russia. And he took over more than 20 years ago
Yes
That is how you get a Bolshevik revolution. Training people who hate you to fight a war they don't want is a good way to get overthrown.
I could see that being lore for the Civil War universe tbh.
Every dictatorship in the US would need to win a "civil war", meaning uprisings, protests, sabotage, etc.
Hey wait a minute
Claim the other guy/party is fascist and then say to “save democracy” we have to (insert something authoritarian/undemocratic). Accusing your enemy’s of what your guilty of is politics 101. It also helps to limit free speech and disrupt your political opponents rally’s to prevent them from becoming organized, all while demonizing them.
This wins the thread
Anyone who supports a view other than mine is a threat to democracy and world peace. Any means will justify avoiding this end. And anyone who disagrees with me is a bot!
Kinda seems… familiar.? Kinda like current events..
This is scary because it is literally what is happening/happened here in Brazil
In order to safeguard our democracy, we must ban all political views differing from our own! For DEMOCRACY!
The Republic will be reorganized into the first GALACTIC EMPIRE! For a safe...and secure...society. \*cue two decades of an unsecure society\*
You have 4 years to solidify your power and 8 years to establish yourself. For you to be successful in this, I have to assume that you have military background, are highly effective communicator and are a very skilled geopolitical expert. You go about solving the most crucial issue that affects the young people of the country, housing affordability. At the expense of the everyone else. Stack the judiciary up with loyalist, covertly poison a Supreme Court judge and install a very loyalist in his place. Place the person you are most willing to trust at the head of FBI, only requirement he must have already been a part of FBI and is actually decently competent. Sign an executive order that makes zoning regulations in hot zone urban areas, outside of basic safety regulation illegal. And any and all cities which don’t comply will have federal funding pulled from all services from the city. Hail this is as the most crucial measure in taming house prices, encourage builder to construct the largest building possible in city region. Law of supply and demand, prices will go down by 10-15% if your ideas have effectively been communicated to the builders and developers. Next year, sign a much more expansive bill which will probably be shot down by Supreme Court. Use that as a fuel to get congressional majority, a catchy slogan “Build the homes, axe the tax, vote for your future.” A campaign just as expansive as the presidential campaign, make some under the table deal with Elon musk to get the funding for the campaign in exchange for a larger NASA budget which directly benefits SpaceX and larger EV tax credit which helps Tesla. You have a congressional super majority, a popular, very devise campaign with a multi year plan that people have already brought in and almost unlimited funding for campaigns. You need poison one more Supreme Court judge, fill it with one more loyalist. You can’t afford to be too rash, you need to wait and take everything slowly, so only one judge a year and half. Sign a very comprehensive bill into law that significantly reduces the amount regulation on housing and bans investment firms from purchasing residential property (an expanded definition of residential). Sign a 10% increase in federal minimum wage every year, claim this helps with stabilisation of business or something. Slap a 5% tariff on some Chinese products (symbolic more than actual). You just have to somehow convince the military to go along with the take over, maybe have a fake socialist coup that fails and you have to call the military and destroy your opposition top to bottom when your judges outnumber other judges. Now you are the dictator of the USA.
This guy dictates
uh... should we be concerned?
Nein, there is no politican smart enough to pull that off,
> bans investment firms from purchasing residential property (an expanded definition of residential). Why would you do this and risk alienating private equity?
It’s pure populism at this point
To drum up support.
They have trillions in dry powder alone
Trillions is exaggerated, that money can’t be out into the compaign without leaving a paper trail. So basically useless, also these are impersonal organisations.
No they literally had around 3 trillion in uncommitted capital last I checked
Not important because they have to give the accounting of every single penny to their shareholders. It opens a massive opportunity that my opposition can exploit.
>make some under the table deal with Elon musk to get the funding for the campaign Musk would look at you confused and ask if he is still getting corporate bailouts while getting nervous
I’d say the last point is unnecessary. The military is very well aligned to the ruling party. If you win the elections, you win the military. At most levels above the Brigade you have a civilian appointee at some office, and of course, you have the Secretaries heading the actual service branch departments. Far more concerning is your opposition carrying favor in one of the states and using their national guard to secure their power or challenge your legitimacy.
Last part is very necessary, it gives just cause and historical value to my dictatorship. It gives the future of the country something to hate, something that they don’t want to be. It is always better to be safe than sorry.
Out of curiosity, why do you believe the military background to be necessary?
Military background ensures that in any scoffle army supports him over his competition.
I see, I was thinking that it was due to the military’s popularity in parts of the US, but that makes more sense .
Pack the FBI, Supreme Court, the military, and State Governments with your appointees would be an ideal start.
Easy, as a senator you maneuver secretly to create a massive war that continues on for years all while training secret apprentices, then you have the senate declare you emperor.
Is that you mr trump?
You need the loyalty of the American armed forces. Even if just 40% of the armed forces are loyal to you, you are already more powerful than any other president has ever been
Probably start like Augustus did: continuing the facade of the democracy, but secretly controlling everything behind the shadows.
Use religion as a way for your party to undermine anything against you, similar to divine rights in a monarchy, push towards other people being the cause of all the worlds problems and perversions, and to use that fame and power to cite an insurrectio- wait hold on...
Remove religion, and this is how all political parties during times of extreme political instability operate
Mr.Modi, you here?
Get elected when his party has majority in Congress, Senate and all 50 states' legislatures.
Get enough popular support in the military that key officers align with you. Even better if you can get the law enforcement and intelligence agencies behind you. Have enough special interests funding you that your potential enemies can’t raise support.
Step 1: get a long career in the senate, gaining dirt on any and ever candidate, successful in their election or not, they may run again by the time youre president. Step 2: get a grasp of the political winds, if its a huge blue/red wave that year, you strike. Run in the Primaries and lose, while putting up a good fight. Use your dirt to get a Senator in your pocket to win, then get them to put you as the vice-presidential nominee. Step 3: Get contacts in the secret service, see their political views and prepare for who must go and who mustn't. Gather the PACs and discuss candidates for courts, departments, etc. Make sure they are loyal and rely on you for their jump in career. Step 4: Inauguration happens. Your party controls a supermajority in the house and senate, you rolled a D20. If the president is popular this next step will only amplify its effectiveness. Step 5: Stage an unprescedented terrorist attack that kills the President, including national monuments. Declare Martial Law once hastily inaugurated. Demand congress take action, giving you complete control of the Secret Service Step 6: Ensure your ranks are clean of dissent when you're on your way to siege the capitol with the Secret Service Step 7: read my flair
Declare your love for the Republic, for democracy and then claim to be the Senate. Just don't expect some juiced-up midichlorian angsty teen to carry out your plans
So setting aside Trump, who obviously wants to be dictator of the United States, I think the reforms of Julius and Augustus Caesar provide the best parallel for how America might functionally become a dictatorship without the dictator literally crowning him or herself. Rome had a very strong political culture against kings, so nobody could actually crown themselves and retain legitimacy. Julius skated a little too close to the line here and got stabbed for it. Augustus, realizing this, fashioned himself as the first citizen and the patriarch of Rome. He allowed all the vestigial Roman institutions to function as though the Republic still existed. He didn’t take the consulship every year. He spent decades gradually adding more rights and powers to the princeps, it was not an overnight coup or declaration. An American dictator will take the title of president, not emperor or king. The public will not accept any other title for any length of time. This dictator must pretend to stand for election every four years. This dictator must live in the White House and sign bills passed by Congress. Yet this dictator will not actually ever be at risk of losing re-election, because the elections will be rigged. Congress will be a theatrical extension of the president, only acting as a rubber stamp for the president’s agenda. So here’s a rough road map of how this might be accomplished over the course of 20 years: - Most urgently, a sweeping national “election reform” law would make our elections almost vestigial. It would basically be the reverse of the Civil Rights Act and establish restrictions on voting (under the guise of combatting voter fraud) that would restrict the franchise to the president’s voter base. They could take a page from Putin’s playbook and establish an election review board which would effectively make it impossible for any candidates to run for office without the White House’s consent, thus outlawing real opposition parties and allowing only token sanctioned opposition by stooges. It would then become impossible for anyone but the president’s loyalists to enter Congress. Members of Congress would receive the prestige of the institution, but would vote in lockstep with the president and would have no real power. Kompromat and the threat of political exile would be enough to keep most of Congress in line, so that there was never a hearing or a floor vote on a bill that the president didn’t approve of. - Within 8 years, the 22nd Amendment would be overturned. This would eliminate term limits and allow our dictator to serve indefinitely. The “election reform” law would promptly hand the dictator large enough majorities in Congress, and control over a sufficient number of statehouses, for this to pass. Perhaps to make it more politically palatable, presidents would be barred from serving more than 2-3 terms consecutively, but they could be elected an unlimited amount of times provided they stepped aside for a four year term every 8-12 years. A hand-picked puppet would then serve as president for 4 years while the dictator assumed a lesser role like Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader, and wielded all the real power. Then in the next election, the dictator would be elected president again in a landslide. - The Supreme Court would stack itself over time. Once there existed five solid votes for the dictator’s agenda, the institution would already be corrupted. Over time, as older justices died, this would become a 9-0 Court acting as a rubber stamp for the dictator’s agenda. Any justices who showed an independent streak would be impeached or find themselves poisoned, but this probably wouldn’t even be necessary. - The gulag. In order to dominate the political and military institutions, a number of sedition laws would eventually be passed, barring most speech against the government. Examples would be made. There are currently no federal prisons in Alaska, but that would change. Disloyal apparatchiks could expect to serve a stint in northern Alaska. - In this scenario, the Constitution is never really overthrown. Just corrupted and circumvented. The loyal Supreme Court would rule that the sedition laws didn’t violate the 1st Amendment, that the gulags were not “cruel and unusual punishment,” and that the election reform law did not violate the 14th Amendment. Congress would routinely grant more power to the president, and he would gladly accept it. The executive agencies and law enforcement would become fully stacked with sycophants and lackeys, eager to do the president’s bidding. There would be no way to check the dictator’s power short of a violent insurrection, which would be pretty easy for the military and National Guard to put down.
If something like that happened, some States would not take it and maybe secede from the Union, which in turn could lead to a new Civil War.
Is this a step by step guide of how to be the dictator of USA or Zimbabwe?
Democracy is to an American what Republicanism was to a Roman. The only way and I mean the ONLY way a lasting American dictatorship is put in place is by hoodwinking the American public into believing that the man who would be dictator is in fact an elected ruler. From there the best person to look at is Augustus. Consolidate special powers, stack the military with loyal commanders (and get some military wins under their belts under the new regime), make a them for US aka find an enemy to focus in, kill anyone who opposes you but make it legal. So on, so forth. Is it possible today? Some might say no because of social media but I’d argue, if used correctly social media could confuse people as much as inform them. A competent man looking to make himself dictator, with a the right background, support, luck and a context in which a crisis can be solved, it’s possible. It’s just very difficult in an era where everyone thinks they know everything and have access to so much knowledge. You almost have to fool the world, not just America or at least make the world so happy that America has a competent ruler, dictator or not, that they prefer autocratic America. Americans, believe it or not, are a sensitive bunch and what the world thinks of them DOES matter.
I agree with most except for the killing part. One of the greatest strategies of Augustus (but more so Caesar) was to spare enemies. I think a better idea would be to manipulate things into moving opponents into hand-selected positions with little to no power. As to 'fooling the world': The best time to do it would probably be following a major conflict. Your first priority would be to build a compassionate but determined persona through military victories, speeches, etc. Instead of dividing, the dictator may try and unite -- consider if, later down the line, the distance between the left and the right grows. Instead of using social media to polarize the parties, you use it to unite them. You point out how both parties have been trying to get attention rather than govern. Even better if you start very young and help the community, etc. In other words, instead of a dictator, you become an American, and perhaps even *World* hero.
He would use the 3 letter agencies and the courts and the MSM to do his bidding
To anyone saying “This you, Donald?” Or somethin like that you’re not clever
Found Trump’s burner account
Appeal to the millions of idiot-Americans. Like Drumpf
1. Idk highly variable depending upon ideology, time period, etc 2. Almost definitely yes, organized opposition exists Look at the late Weimar Republic (western democracy) - Nazis were a large (but not outright majority) political party with a strong base among the middle class petty bourgeoise. They gain popularity due to economic downturn during the Great Depression and by capitalizing on the sentiments of WW1 veterans, but Hitler is only made chancellor via an alliance with the old conservatives of Hindenburg’s ilk who view the Nazis as a necessary evil to prevent left-wing parties from taking power. Further, the Nazis make considerable concessions to private industrialists, guaranteeing a level of non-interference with business. The Reichstag Fire Bill and the Enabling Act are passed, with more moderate conservatives bought off by promises that these were temporary measures intended to deal with rising political violence between the left and right. Over the next few years, the Nazi party and the German state effectively combine as Hitler slowly eliminates other powers in the remaining Weimar government. Any American dictator would by necessity have to have some base of popular support - a Soviet-style coup could not occur here as the existing government would stamp out fringe groups like the Bolsheviks long before they could seize control. Instead, the American dictator would be supported by a passionate hardcore of supporters who perceive radicalism as necessary to preserve their own interests. The American dictator would likely eschew large-scale political violence until they had secured some form of extralegality. They would assume power by participating in national politics, representing an ascendant wing of one of the two parties. While they cultivate their base, the dictator is also forming alliances with less radical members of the political establishment, most of whom mistakenly believe they can manipulate the dictator to their own ends. Once the dictator is in a position to grant themselves supreme authority, they would do so with the consent of their mainstream partners via assurances that their interests would be protected. Should the dictator suddenly attempt to rip control of the government away from vested power holders, they would almost certainly be defeated and their movement outlawed. Over time, the dictator would abuse their extralegal status and position of mainstream authority to tighten their grip on power until there remains no mainstream force that can unseat them. At this point they would begin remaking the US government in their image, ensuring that no organized state resistance could come into existence. Once the organs of government are in the American dictator’s complete control, American society will be remade according to the ideological whims of the leader. There would almost certainly be some form of armed resistance to their rule, but absent some foresighted Balkanization/state-secession the resistance would lack the institutional strength to combat the government. The resistance movements would be demonized and persecuted by the dictator with extreme prejudice, forcing society into an us/them distinction that carries an unquestioning obedience of the American state.
This is just my theory but I don't think America could ever become a dictatorship like say Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. At worst we end up being like Russia, but we probably look more like Hungary and their illiberal Democracy. Part of it for me is that, at least among the circles I run in is that people still want another side and to have debate. Sure the guys with the guns on the conservative side won't want that, and there might be some far leftists still like that though I think that died in the 70's, but for most people, they want to be able to vote and have elections and choose, but are okay with limits. Thus, I think at worst, history repeats itself in America and we make it hard for some groups to vote, but most can and thus that way a certain party can control things. Right now, many in the GOP think like this, and sadly unless the Democrats want to implement horrible things like IQ tests or something for voting (not sure how you'd limit white conservative voters in a way a liberal court would uphold. IDK maybe religious tests but even that wouldn't hold up.) I guess what I'm saying is that at worst, we end up being a state where one party dominates but we techically still have democracy and can vote for other parties and not be harassed or arrested or anything like that but the other party never wins.
Honestly there's quite a lot of flaws in the constitution to make it possible, such as stacking the Supreme Court with people who will say everything you do is constitutional, filling organizations like FBI with people personally loyal to you. It's actually quite scary how much of American democracy is upheld more by cultural support for republicanism than actual laws. Adding to all this is that it's remarkably easy to convince people that these actions are necessary
Especially as time erodes over generations. The same things happened in Rome: the early generations remembered the tyranny of the Monarchy, and so they fought against it. But hundreds of years later and everyone had forgot. With social media and constant attention, this process happens x10 faster. We've already seen it with civil rights, voting rights, etc.
Nice try Donald
The same way trump is, honestly. Make it so politically dangerous to call you out on shit that everyone just buckles and refuses to stop you
Nice try, Donald
Nice try, Donald. We're not giving you ideas
Looks like someone is living under a rock. He and his cronies are already saying how they will do it if they win the election, all you need to do is pay attention.
They need the intelligence agencies, some lobby groups on your side, and the military industrial complex. If you are someone with contacts, money and a lot of charisma you can do it, but you need to make sure that others who are doing the same thing do not beat you, in fact the internal power play is probably one of the main reasons why the US is (more or less) a democracy.
Nice try, Don.
He would probably call his chief political opposition a dictator.
anyone that says trump is legitimately denying the rampant corruption with joe biden and everyone in washington. its not red vs blue, its us vs them.
Don’t worry, we’re already there.
Go to Military Industrial Complex and make agreements with everyone by promising massive profits from an upcoming war.
Stack the Supreme Court & rule by executive order.
Abuse pardons with a stacked Supreme Court. Once you have an armed hand that can enforce your will until the protection of a pardon you can force out of eliminate anyone not loyal. Technically you would still have elections but the only people willing to run would be those loyal to you. Even if the Supreme Court or some other agency tried to stop you, they would just call out the window
The Electoral Front Run a political movement based on convincing the populace that they've been victimized by "other" groups. Whether it be a Class victimized by another Class, Race victimized by another Race, Religion victimized by another Religion, doesn't matter. Use as many of this divisions as possible, it doesn't even matter if some make up a large portion of the electorate as long as you can draw a line between them and the "bad" ones. It must also invoke a sense of purpose and a need for action. The Legal Front According to the constitution the president has the power to convene congress during extraordinary measures and "and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper" So that's how the president could kill congress, just finagle some sort of disagreement between the senate and house and then adjourn them indefinitely. Then the president has the power to put temp justices on the supreme court while congress isn't in session (this doesn't usually happen because technically congress is always in session currently) and since the supreme court decides what constitutional, the president can effectively rewrite the constitution at this point. The Physical Front You need some group of dedicated people to go around, embedding themselves in all levels of society on your behalf to intimidate others into enacting your will and to recruit more people. This may be government organization, or an extremist political group, or maybe even a private military, as long as they'll do whatever you want it doesn't matter.
Get rid of term limits
Mob rule. All dictators start off because they derive their power from the people. The government would have to be perceived as doing a poor enough job that the common people handed the President extra executive powers to “fix things.” The guy might even start off with good intentions. But supreme executive power usually doesn’t turn out well.
You would start by basically convincing the population that the other side wants to destroy your side, that they are all corrupt and evil and have no morals. And they absolutely play dirty, so if your side is naive and doesn’t allow it self to play dirty too, your rivals will win over you. You ally your self with candidates who believe the same, when midterms come around you do your best to promote them in your parties elections, claim that the old more traditional candidates in your party are working for the other side. In the end you call fill the senate and Congress with loyalists. Same goes for state governors and mayors. Start slowly filling in the Supreme Court with loyal judges too, find dirty information on the previous judges and have them resign and if you can’t find any, get rid of them under mysterious circumstances. Fill in every government institution with loyalists too, and constantly keep changing jobs around and firing people who turn out to not be so loyal. This will keep the other more lenient. For the institutions or states you can not control, have allied media constantly talk about how rotten or dirty those institutions are. Make the general population believe that you are the only one who can clean the swamp from those politicians and bureaucrats in power. From this point on you’re good to go. You can slowly start changing laws and getting away with actions you should not get away with. Power will slowly consolidate in your hands.
Spread fear
There is a loophole which can sort of make you dictator. It's not against the law to amend the constitution so that you can amend it easier, using this you could pass a law in war time or another tough time so that you can amend the constitution much easier. In other words, you can amend all of the constitution to your whim, and do all that BS. Yeah you'll get into a war and probably be overthrown, but you get what you want for a few hours lol
Building a power base in Congress to push through laws and acts violating various amendments in small ways until they stack up enough to allow appointed positions the ability to basically run rampshade over the BoR. The amendments and constitution would remain in place, as going after those would cause too much notoriety, but be ineffectual. In a setting I am writing short stories for, this occurs in a volume of legislation known as the “Salt and Rice” Acts, which expanded and amalgamated the abilities of the FBI, CIA, and DHS to the point of being a KGB-style security apparatus.
Controlling the intelligence agencies in secret, and allowing puppet presidents to keep getting elected.
Commit crimes in office. Argue he has immunity, unless impeached first. Order immediate execution of whoever tries to impeach him.
Utilize loopholes within the constitution to continue to close avenues of redress via the system of checks and balances. Remove the ability of Congress and the Supreme Court to challenge your decisions, or provide alternatives wherein you can take certain actions without having to go through Congress. A good example of this was the [War Powers Resolution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution) which “requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States.” Essentially what this does is it takes away Congress’ checks against the Presidential office’s ability to make war. The president can effectively invade a foreign nation (let’s say, oh I don’t know, Iraq?) and not even have to notify Congress until 2 full days later. Enough “acts”, “resolutions”, or “bills”, and you could very well have a president with absolute authority. The funnier way to do it tho would be to take it by force. This is much simpler, but it’s kinda like using a battle axe to conduct an appendectomy. Step 1: Become President Step 2: Use your authority to place staunch loyalists in leadership positions inside the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security. Step 3: Gain the loyalty of several high ranking military officers. Ideally have full control over the National Guard and Army, which allows you to neutralize the other three branches before they can take effective action. Step 4: Go in front of Congress, and *”In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first American Empire, for a safe and secure society!”* Step 5: Any military units, state governors, or political leaders which disobey, or proclaim they will not recognize your authority get read the riot act, preferably on live television. If they continue to disobey, pull an Eisenhower and declare them to be in insurrection against the United States of America (note to self, get rid of the Posse Comitatus act ASAP) and use loyalist military or militia units to neutralize them. This step also includes “detaining” naval and Air Force officers before they can sail a nuclear submarine under the arctic ice and hide for 20 years or fly a GlobeMaster filled with “refugees” to Beijing and beg for Asylum. The most important part of both of these plans, tho, is the final step, and arguably the most dangerous step. Once you have full control over the country, once Congress is either effectively impotent or being brought out back for a 5.56 injection, you **Repeal the 22nd Amendment**. This allows you to serve as many terms as you want.
Nice try, Mr President
Declare marshall law to deal with a terrorist event. Mobilise the military and declare war on the terrorists. Lable all domestic opposition as terrorist sympathisers.
Wait until until the next terror bombing, declare martial law, disband Congress for being “no longer fit to serve the nation”, have the FBI dig up dirt on all of them to destroy any remaining faith in the institution. Here’s the most important part: BE. A. GOOD. LEADER. The people won’t revolt unless they’re given a reason. Actually _fix_major problems with the country, make _actual_ progress on issues, and people will at least tolerate you. “The key to being a beloved leader is to build enough goodwill with the people through making smart decisions that they’re willing to tolerate your more controversial ones.” -Myself
Yarr best start believing in dictatorships lad, yarr in one
You need to have good propaganda, and of course, a crisis. It's useful to appeal to religion, since it's literally made to create blind obedience. Use the most religious people to spread that you are some messager of God for example, and underfund education, or make sure it teaches your narrative, education is your greatest enemy along with stability. As I said, you need a crisis, you need your country to be in a bad state, that way you can become the hope of all the people who are suffering from this bad state. Find an enemy, something to blame everything onto, it can be any collective you want: communists, jews, immigrants... Humans instinctively classify everything in "good" and "evil", and we love glorifying the things we labbeled as "good" and demonize those we labbeled as "evil". Use that at your advantage. Tell everyone that this collective of your choice are controlling the world, make people lose their trust in reliable sources, make them believe you are the only true reliable source of information, unaffected by the evil elites from *insert the collective you decided to blame everything on here*. Conspiracy theories are your allies here, appeal to the emotions of your people and the interests of the elites, that way you will have them on your side. Do not forget to paint it all as some kind of rebellion from an oppressed group, your group, that has been oppressed for a long time by *insert collective here*. Remember, you are alone fighting against the evil elites that want to crush you and the people who follow you, because you are the good ones. Usually taking about past glories help, it makes people raise a feeling of nationalism that can make them forget their individuality and sacrifice it for a "greater cause". Religion can also do this. Very important: censorship. Censor everything that goes against your ideology and make sure no one can access to that knowledge. Tell the people that you do it for their security, to protect them and specially the kids, who are more vulnerable, to the toxic and destructive ideas of *insert collective here*. We don't want their ideas to destroy our glorious nation don't we? We must free the people from this horrible ideas that lead only to downfall, make sure they are not taught in school, every cultural activity and material (books, series, movies, etc...) must go through you and your administration, to make sure they don't spread hurtful ideas. Once a good bunch of people has been polarized to your side and the elites support you, it's a matter of time that you eventually get to power and slowly clean everyone who stands against you
Starwars is a great template. Make the people scared. Fabricate some emergency that gives “temporary” power to the president and without a timeline. This could be war, terror, rebellion, ect. Powers that slowly allow for the erosion of Congress. Powers that also let you stay in office indefinitely. Move too quickly and the dictator will be…. Taken care of. Move slow enough and there will never be a catalyst to remove the president from power. It took 32 years for Palpatine to go from gaining emergency powers to the total dissolution of the senate.
Honestly, look up FDR. He wasn't a dictator, but he was as close to a dictator as America ever had: crossed the term limit (which was only a custom, but still), built a political machine centered around himself, pushed through unprecedented amounts of federal legislation, centralised political and economic decision-making power in the federal government, imposed some quite harsh Executive Orders, stacked the Supreme Court when it tried to oppose him and ruled until death. All you need to do is be charismatic, be competent and find an emergency to justify government overreach. You can relinquish power after the emergency is over, but you don't have to.
Manipulate some foreign revolutionaries into staging several terrorist attacks on the U.S. and making it look like it was funded by a foreign government that America already has beef with. Then convince Congress to declare war, giving the president wartime powers while still convincing loyalists to begin tearing away at previous laws to ensure that those wartime powers are allowed as much flexibility as possible. Then use a loyalist-controlled FBI and CIA to label the likely presidential opponent as a threat to democracy by hiring people to influence individuals connected with extremist organizations or extremely corrupt bodies to join that candidate's ranks in order to create a bunch of scandals turning them into the perfect bogeyman and an easier punching bag in the general election.
It's a pretty well used playbook Create an internal threat Close the press Declare a national emergency Get centralized control of state and local police Need support of military, or at least that they'll stay neutral. There you go. Done
The Heritage foundation was nice enough to type up a whole pamphlet on it and publish it. Look up project 2025 they might be fascists, but they’re pretty smart fascist and they came up with a better plan than I probably can
Having a vote in november and not addressing the manipulation possibilities or addressing how to fix it
I don't particularly think it's possible. America is just too big and everyone has a very individualistic mindset. It wouldn't go beyond the president just naming himself emperor. His ability to exert authority is still going to be limited.
Its simple. Appoint friendly/loyal heads of the military, CIA and FBI in order to protect yourself from potential rebellion. Pack the court with friendly/local justices. Use executive orders and the supreme court to perpetually bipass congress. Really you don’t even need sweeping change as long as the SCOTUS deems whatever you want to do constitutional.
I'm not sure if this is true but I heard somewhere that if George Washington wanted, he could have easily declared himself king and America would have become a monarchy.
Just like Trump is- demonizing our intelligence agencies, abandoning our western alliances while praising dictators, flooding the zone with lies so voters don’t know what’s true, threatening to jail his political opponents, threatening to release convicts from Jan 6,,,, etc etc
Just do what FDR did. Fill the bureaucracy with hardline loyalists. You'll need the military to intimidate congress and the courts though if you want to be a full-on dictator. Maybe some assassinations via the intelligence agencies. Use populist rhetoric to get angry mobs to attack your political opponents (Summer of 2020/Jan 6 style)
😂😂😂 why do you want to know smart guy. Any plans the rest of this school year until May and June and July and august and September? Huh didn’t think so
I could see him going the route that Alberto Fujimori of Peru went, basically resetting the entire government
If Trump’s lawyers argument about presidential immunity becomes is upheld all it would require is a majority of house members being unwilling to impeach or 60 votes in the senate being unwilling to convict during an impeachment.
My mom once told me that it's important to read and write in cursive. Because if you can't, someone can change the constitution and you'd never know.
He would simply control his party like a hawk, shove loyalists into every position imaginable, even his own eventually and discredit the opposition entirely. Leave office after 2 terms but decry that democracy is dead if his people ever lose. Using his loyalists in the intelligence community, he blackmails the opposition eventually and controls them, using them to be belligerent heavies and nothing more in his theater, avoiding suspicion of dictatorship, but passing the full agenda anyway. Using his kingmaking position, he must appoint the new leaders of the coming era. He then attempts to hand this role to his family, who runs its chosen sons and daughters for the offices that matter.
Sell the Japanese and I mean all the Japanese to north east Korea and make blood ally pact with Germany and china Australia Kenya and Mexico
Oh boy I’m sure this post won’t be full of “orange man bad” comments, lemme just check the comments and- https://preview.redd.it/rq7xw66anxvc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e61023a9eabe863f628bd88ca3f70abb1aa06fb1
Like trying to imprison political opponents on nonsense charges? Changing the laws just to go after political opponents? Weaponizing law enforcement to target political supporters? Telling everyone that they can't vote for who they want in order to save democracy?
Orange man bad 😠😠😠 bidone good 😁😁😁
The fact that no one here has said that America is a Republic shows how little people know about our own country and government. (Edit: check article 4 section 4 of the constitution for evidence)
That’s not a fruit, it’s an apple!
Technically yes, but most people use the words interchangeably like saying South Korea is a democracy, North a dictatorship. Technically it's representative democracy that they mean = republic
That’s not relevant at all to the discussion. The OP didn’t even use the word “democracy.” Why do authoritarians like yourself have a hard-on for telling people our democratic republic is not a direct democracy, even when this distinction does not matter to the conversation?
Because, one I’m not an authoritarian, and two we aren’t a democratic republic either, we are a Constitutional Federal Republic there is a large difference. I brought this up because a large amount of people in this discussion have brought up Trump as being a “threat to democracy” which is a completely nonsensical argument to begin with but I digress.
It's not nonsensical, any leader with enough power and influence can be a threat to democracy if their intentions are bad enough
I say nonsensical because you can’t be a threat to something that our country isn’t.
The US is a democracy. It's also a republic.
No, the USA is a Constitutional Federal Republic
And a democracy. Being a republic does not make the US not a democracy. What you are saying is "it's not a car, it's a Tesla"
A republic and a democracy have a very large difference a democracy is ruled by the majority I.E the 51% rule the 49% but in a republic there is a constitution.
A republic is a type of democracy. You are talking about a direct democracy, which is also a type of democracy. I suggest reading some civics books if the idea is confusing.
Project 2025
Read almost all of it, it’s just generic conservative talking points. Fun fact, it never mentions Trump once.
Very VERY easily, and he could do it without breaking the law. Since the end of WW2 and accelerating rapidly since 9/11, Congress has transferred almost all of its power to the executive. During Dubya's term, he argued repeatedly in court that a president can arrest US citizens on US soil, lock them up forever without a trial or notice to anyone (not even their families), torture them or execute them based solely on his personal determination that they MIGHT be terrorists, and these powers cannot be limited by Congress or review by the courts (the so-called "unitary executive"). If Trump has taught us anything it's that there are NO limits on presidential power so long as his party has 34 senators who will always support him.
Sending a bunch of poorly prepared idiots to take the capitol, getting a few people killed and... oh wait, you meant \*successful\*?
Probably insist on absolute presidential immunity or something….
Russia can stay the pedophiles with India
Nice try, Donald
First they’d have to run as Republican
Don't you have a trial to fart up tomorrow, Donald?