Chronicles on the Road to Fascism II: “Long live the King”

We Must Take Seriously Trump's Intention to Become Dictator

Many Americans are dismissing Trump’s shocking self-referential exclamation on X --“Long live the king!” -- as hyperbole. But even as Donald Trump began his first campaign for the presidency it was clear that he was not running to serve America; he was running to rule over it.

Given his extreme malignant narcissism, his megalomaniacal need for attention and control, and his well-known record of cheating and lying in his career and personal relationships, it was evident that Trump is incapable of allegiance to anything other than his own selfish interests and appetites. After all, a man devoid of principles, whose only fealty is to himself, can never be a patriot. And given his narcissist’s need for power and attention and his coward’s need to appear tough, what he sought, in the final analysis, could be nothing less than to sit atop this nation as its ruler. His victory in his first election, and even more in his last, demonstrated that most were unable to imagine that he posed as monstrous a danger to our democracy as so many of us warned. In the end, most ignored the dire warnings about Trump as exaggerated and alarmist, and pulled the lever for him.

Although apparently Trump’s narcissism and megalomania were not enough to indicate his dictatorial aspirations, those aspirations began to appear in earnest immediately following his initial election, when in the thrall of his megalomania he sought to celebrate his inauguration – and trumpet his newly found power -- by mounting something unprecedented in American history: an extensive military parade of the type long favored by tyrants, featuring the full array of America’s military might, with Trump holding court ensconced in a Pennsylvania Avenue reviewing stand surrounded by military generals (whom Trump, like an imperial potentate, has referred to as “my generals”), a spectacle very much similar to the military parades staged by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Trump’s object of obsessive admiration and capitulation.

Since then the evidence of his dictatorial aspirations have been plentiful, particularly his enthusiastic expressions of admiration for some of the world’s most murderous dictators. For instance, Trump spoke admiringly of the iron grip the homicidal North Korean leader, Kim Jung Un, wields over his countrymen. “He speaks and his people sit up at attention,” said Trump. “I want my people to do the same.”