Opinion | How to build a dictator

For the most part, I tend to brush aside the dire, ominous predictions of doom and dictatorship about Donald Trump and his upcoming second run at making as much money as humanely possible for himself, his friends and his family. 

I’m mostly an optimist, so it’s hard for me to imagine that Trump, dumb and oafish as he is, can manage to put together a workable plan that could even come close to destroying America, as many predict. I mean, despite his best efforts to hatch some plot the last time, the closest he actually got to truly upending democracy and creating a lasting stain on the country came by accident – when his throng of idiot supporters stormed the Capitol because they thought their coward leader was coming to join them. 

All the rest of his ideas and inclinations were so utterly devoid of basic common sense and were so childlike in their conjuring that even the dopes still with Trump at the end were laughing at them. 

So, yeah, I tend to think a lot of the “Donald Trump is a threat to democracy” stuff is hyperbole that means little. 

Except for one thing. One thing that really has little to do with Trump himself. 

That one thing is the tendency of so many people who are – or will be – in power with Trump to cower in his presence, to bend to his idiotic whims, to placate his ridiculous, stream-of-consciousness notions on all matters and carry out his narcissistic, childish wishes. Honestly, for a group of people who love to run around calling others “betas” and worrying about masculinity, they sure are a bunch of little bi… well, you know what I’m saying. 

And that’s something that actually could be a threat to the country. 

That sort of cowardice and compliance is necessary for dictators to take control, for nations to falter and for bad, bad things to happen. And cowardice and compliance is at an all-time high these days – even before Trump takes office. This past week has proven that, if nothing else. 

Like, for example, Gov. Kay Ivey announcing, a few days after her visit to Florida to meet with the president-elect, that she would be returning the flags at the Alabama Capitol to full staff on inauguration day. They’re at half-staff, as is custom, for the 30-day mourning period following the passing of former President Jimmy Carter. 

Trump has whined about this fact, and made up an entire scenario in his McDonald’s-adled brain in which Democrats were celebrating the lowered flags on inauguration day, and his group of lackeys have mounted a pressure campaign to get the flags raised to full staff. 

It’s an utterly ridiculous ask. Because who in their right mind cares if the flag is at full staff? And how could the mourning of a former president ever be construed as a negative for an incoming president – at least one whose brain works properly? 

And yet, our governor will comply with these wishes. She’ll break protocol and fail to honor a good and decent human being – a person she almost certainly voted for – in deference to a lunatic. 

That’s worrisome. 

And Ivey is just one of many. In fact, out of all the capitulating that has occurred recently, hers is probably near the bottom of the list in terms of most troubling. 

At confirmation hearings this week, as some of Trump’s appointees for cabinet positions started their grilling, we were treated to quite the show of bending knees and ring kissings. The AG nominee couldn’t say if Joe Biden won the 2020 election. The defense secretary nominee couldn’t say if he would refuse to obey an unlawful order from Trump. The energy secretary nominee refused to back down on his statement from a couple of years ago that wildfire threats in California were mostly hype. 

All of that followed several weeks now of Republicans – some of whom I’ve spoken with and who I genuinely like and respect – pretending in media interviews that Trump’s idiotic ideas about taking back the Panama Canal, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, buying/taking over Greenland and welcoming Canada as the 51st state are really serious, doable ideas. 

It was like a real life “The Emperor Has No Clothes” skit. With Republicans giving lengthy interviews on how great the velvet feels, and boy, look at those vibrant colors. 

It’s also unbelievably nauseating, watching grown, professional people kowtow and grovel in such an utterly demeaning and embarrassing manner. Knowing full well that anyone with a working brain knows what this is. 

Look, I get it – Trump is a transactional president who can be manipulated to do damn near anything by massaging his gigantic ego. Ivey probably wants Space Command back, or to get other concessions. The nominees, whom none of us would trust to water our plants while we’re on vacation, need those cabinet appointments. These other lawmakers need their pet projects. 

But there has to be a line. Because pretty soon, all of this capitulating and deference becomes the norm. Cowardice becomes a way of life. Rules and laws and regulations and precedent and traditions become things we used to have. 

And an actual dictator is born.