Can a Dictatorship Happen in America?

5/6/2020

By Olivia Pierson

In the Leighton Smith Podcast this week, released on Wednesday June 3rd, Leighton interviewed George Friedman of Geopolitical Futures and the subject of President Trump came up.

Friedman, who is a conservative, has often supported the president but this time he offered some fairly vague criticisms of him along the lines of: “He just has to make everything about him.” “I want him to lead.” “He’s supposed to be everybody’s president.” “He condemned the demonstrators but hasn’t said a word about…” [sentence incomplete]. “This requires sensitivity, Trump has many virtues, understanding the complexity of this is not one of them.”

Friedman is by no means a silly man and the conversation which unfolds in this interview is a fascinating one. As far as criticisms of President Trump go, because we’re now accustomed to a negative pitch which is usually hysterical, these are pretty thoughtful but I couldn’t help but feel they were also a tad ornery, almost as if Friedman was getting weary of having to put up a defence of someone whom everyone else has completely got it in for.

However, something really got my attention in this discussion: Leighton asked Friedman a profoundly important question in the form of a statement:

"Trump is the last bastion standing between America going heavily socialist or retaining their birthright, if the Democrats get their way.”

Friedman was very quick to disagree and answered:

“America has no chance of going socialist, they’re bitterly opposed to anyone getting involved in their business.”

I think a lot of people would hold this opinion, but the Western world’s acquiescence to a total lockdown of all individual liberties in the name of a pandemic, even in America, should snuff it out.

Continuing to dismiss this idea about socialism that Leighton raised, Friedman claimed that the Democrats, “Blew the socialists out of the water,” (referring, I think, to Bernie Sanders being eliminated from the Democratic primaries).

I would love to think that this were really the case, but I don’t think it is.

Waiting in the wings hoping to be named as Biden’s choice for VP is a whole gaggle of hideous harridans, loud socialist females who hate their capitalist country, from Stacey Abrams right through to Elizabeth Warren (despite the latter’s friendliness with big corporates - socialists always need money to loot).

In the unlikely event that Biden wins the presidency this November, considering his overt “mental wobbliness” (I’m being unusually kind), that pick of VP will no doubt become president if Biden flakes out from his presidential duties - and almost nobody who follows American politics closely would be surprised if that happened.

Right now, in the face of Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA intentionally ginning-up the real underbelly of protest culture, i.e., riots, looting, violence, murder and the smashing up of individual businesses, the people funding and fuelling this horrible state of anarchy are now calling for the police to be defunded by the federal government.

The same people have also been baying for ICE and border control to be abolished, especially that squad of ghastly congresswomen headed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Thlaib, who are all Democrats. They are elected representatives, so contrary to what Friedman asserts about America being at no risk of going socialist, which really means communist, when you ponder the content of the Green New Deal that even the more sensible Tulsi Gabbard says she mostly agrees with, somebody in that country is busy voting for these out-and-out pinko vixens in the Democratic party. No wonder Biden has to choose one to show his appeasement.

But here’s the thing that in my view is dangerous, we now see Fox News report this yesterday:

“The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020,” General John Allen, who served as a special envoy for the global alliance against ISIS under former President Barack Obama and now heads the Brookings Institution think tank, writes in Foreign Policy magazine…

“Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.”

Going deep into the bowels of progressive Wokedom, which one would expect from an Obama loyalist like Allen, he stated:

“Donald Trump expressed only the barest of condolences at the murder of George Floyd, but he also said nothing about the fundamental and underlying reasons for the unrest: systemic racism and inequality, a historic absence of respect, and a denial of justice.”

Aside from Allen’s “systemic racism” cliched nonsense, his term “the barest of condolences” is an abject lie.

I heard the president say:

“I want to express our nation’s deepest condolences and most heartfelt sympathies to the family of George Floyd, terrible event, terrible, terrible event that happened.

I’ve asked that the DOJ expedite the federal investigation into his death and do it immediately and do it as quickly as absolutely possible, it’s a local situation but we’re also making it into a federal situation. It’s a terrible thing. We all saw what we saw, it’s very hard to conceive of anything other than what we did see, it should never happen, it should never be allowed to happen, a thing like that, but we’re determined that justice be served.”

So Allen was talking through his woke ass.

Then on Wednesday of this week, after we all witnessed the ongoing rioting, the shocking arson, the horrific beatings, the glass smashing and looting of private businesses - and even the assault of more policemen - right across America, President Trump’s former Defense Secretary, General James Mattis, openly criticised Trump’s realistic statement to consider bringing in the military to stop all this violence in its tracks. Mattis wrote in an op-ed:

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

What is staggering to me about these words from Mattis is that he’s waxing on about defending the Constitution as if that does not include his constitutional obligation to be loyal to his commander-in-chief - and as if American citizens have a constitutional right to violence, murder and vandalism!

What the hell planet are we on when generals talk this treasonous language and start encouraging other generals, retired or operational, to also talk that way? To answer myself, I’m worried that they are now contemplating a hard coup and are gauging where the military’s loyalties lie.

President Trump’s current Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, agreed with Mattis, and is under pressure - as many generals now are - to pick a side.

This sounds dangerous.

We’ve already seen the enemies of the president fail to bring down his administration though the most corrupt tactics imaginable - the Russia Hoax, the conspiring of the intelligence agencies through Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Rice and Lynch, then there was that total charade we know as the impeachment scandal.

If these disgruntled folks are not willing to let another free and fair election through, which may elect President Trump for another four years, the only thing left now is an actual hard coup where the military have to choose whether to serve their commander-in-chief or show loyalty to their disgruntled colleagues, like General Mattis, General Kelly and General Allen who are making a lot of noise about the president being unconstitutional.

To use the military to quell violence, murders and looting on America’s streets is not unconstitutional. Mattis should well know this in his curmudgeonly old bones! The fact that he isn’t acknowledging that, but instead is calling President Trump’s actions unconstitutional, is a betrayal of his president and his country.

If President Trump gets overthrown, a dictatorship awaits America. If we see a peaceful transition of power into the Democrat hands of Biden with one of his harridans, a dictatorship awaits America, but at least in this scenario Americans would have demanded it (if they don’t cheat with the ballot).

I’ve already written in another article that the riots we are watching are not an authentic reaction to the death of poor George Floyd, but are a manipulated, orchestrated call to violence which is more reminiscent of Kristallnacht in 1938, and capitalists and business owners - the middle class - are the new “Jews.” Every general watching these events should be against these violent riots on principle.

President Trump is not the dictator in waiting, he’s the one standing for traditional, individualist, American values - but modern, university educated young people and even lefty Boomers label those values some form of “dictatorship” - the patriarchy, white privilege, racist colonialism, white lash and all that evil bollox.

The dictator in waiting is someone on the Left who wants this civil war to occur, which is most of them, as they all bow to groups like Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA - the actual violent fascists pretending to be against fascism.

Regarding dictatorship and socialism and those who say it could never happen in America, as Friedman said to Leighton Smith, we should be vigilantly mindful that those words have been said before in history, many times over.

If people have never read the books of Ayn Rand from the 1940s and 50s, now might be an excellent time to do so, since their common theme is the unraveling of the Republic as dictatorship takes over. They’re Orwellian, but with more hope embedded through the voices of their heroes.

Being a Russian Jew, after experiencing the Bolsheviks completely take over Russia, including her father’s business, and after she had defected to the United States to enjoy freedom she then watched the rise of Nazism in Europe. Rand took this moment to pen a letter in 1941 titled To All Innocent Fifth Columnists.

In it, she clearly explained the case that any society could fall to dictatorship if those who value freedom are not vigilant enough in protecting their nation.

Here’s an excerpt that I would like George Friedman, and others, to reflect upon:

Don't delude yourself by minimizing the danger. You see what is going on in Europe and what it's doing to our own country and to your own private life. What other proof do you need? Don't say smugly that "it can't happen here." Stop and look back for a moment.

The first Totalitarian dictatorship happened in Russia. People said: well, Russia was a dark, backward, primitive nation where anything could happen — but it could not happen in any civilized country.

The next Totalitarian dictatorship happened in Italy — one of the oldest civilized countries of Europe and the mother of European culture. People said: well, the Italians hadn't had much experience in democratic self-government, but it couldn't happen anywhere else.

The next Totalitarian dictatorship happened in Germany — the country of philosophers and scientists, with a long record of the highest cultural achievements. People said: well, Germany was accustomed to autocracy, and besides there's the Prussian character, and the last war, etc. — but it could not happen in any country with a strong democratic tradition.

Could it happen in France? People would have laughed at you had you asked such a question a year ago. Well, it has happened in France — France, the mother of freedom and of democracy, France, the most independent-minded nation on earth. Well?

What price your smug self-confidence? In the face of millions of foreign money and foreign agents pouring into our country, in the face of one step after another by which our country is [moving] closer to Totalitarianism — you do nothing except say: ‘It can't happen here.’

Do you hear the Totalitarians answering you — ‘Oh, yeah?’

Rand goes on to explain that all the totalitarians require is your indifference.

About President Trump: There is absolutely nothing wrong with a president, a leader of the Free World at that, who places himself at the very centre of everything he does, because heroes always do - from Pericles to Churchill to Paton.

This idea that powerful leaders should be like Reagan and “lead without appearing to lead” is a self conscious hangover from Christian humility culture. Reagan did not suffer from such silly, second-hand humility when he stood in Berlin and demanded in 1987, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Thank god.

Give me the Greek, heroic egoist any day of the week. It is perfectly fitting for the President of the United States who has a strong sense of destiny to boldly ooze that egoism in his character - and folks who don’t possess it should just admire it.

The British establishment detested that egoistic impulse in Churchill too, a product of his ancient aristocratic breeding, yet without it, he would never have been able to dig deep into his inner strength and superb sense of destiny, beyond that of the average man, to withstand the responsibilities of a world at war which bore down upon his shoulders, like Atlas.

You do not want an Atlas to shrug, but in case you doubt the devastation that would bring to civilisation, try reading the story of one who does.

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer"

23 Comments

Purple Flower

5/6/2020 05:18:34 am

Excellent article, but I disagree with the statements:
"If President Trump gets overthrown, a dictatorship awaits America.
If we see a peaceful transition of power into the Democrat hands of Biden with one of his harridans, a dictatorship awaits America,"

American democracy and freedoms as we have always known it will prevail no matter what. If, by some moment of madness in time, the Democrats win the election with their socialistic and lovey dovey promises, nothing that they have promised will be brought to fruition. Their election promises will be empty promises as usual, and nothing will be implemented in the four ensuing years, that's all.

Expressing disagreement with the person or party in power is what Americans do and relish. It is their way of life; they thrive on it. It is a different cultural aspect from that in NZ where one is not supposed to question authority.

The current unrest in the USA has been magnified out of all proportion. While there are some bad actors, they really are few and far between when you take into account the whole population. The real reason for the unrest, which was triggered by George Floyd's death, is the pandemic and its effects. People's lives have been upended. They have been under stay-at-home orders for months, they can't go to work, they are frustrated. They wanted a cause to vent their frustrations on and the bad actors took advantage of the opportunity.

5/6/2020 09:47:58 pm

I enjoyed Atlas shrugged. As an Engineer myself, Hank Rearden had a certain appeal. As did going Galt. Yet the love scenes with Dagny seemed misplaced. Like justification of adultery. Ayn’s fear of the communism she saw implemented shines through all her work. Yet her wild economic libertarianism will only see the same problems arise again. Her worship of the $ on cigarettes? You may as well pledge allegiance to Mammon, shave your head and offer yourself as sacrifice to BLM.

Socialism and fascism arose during the 20th century as a reaction to the excesses of capitalism of the 1800’s. Enlightenment unbound by morality has ended with the mess we have today. A system about to be toppled by an alliance of hard left communists and corporate communists, against the majority, whom don’t care for such things, but are getting caught up in the flame of revolution, and enslaved to an evil will. The evil will is propogated by the keepers of the debt, those whom take no risk, but whom demand of us a life of labour. Enlightenment is beta, and will always become a gimp to strong will.

Yet, you are right. Good will prevail if the hobbits learn to fight. As Gandalf said: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

Howie

6/6/2020 01:17:34 am

Excellent article, Olivia. Your point about a "Seven Days in May" military coup must be considered a possibility given the hatred for DJT and the reality of four more years. With Mattis I thought money was the deteminant but your article shed light on a desperate cabal of people whose futures are at stake. Lineberry makes some good points. Reportedly, there are 16 million AR-15 owners in the USA, to say nothing about the tremendous support DJT has amongst the police and the lower levels of the military, Yet, you give thought. Mattis was talking like a brainless snowflake and not a hardened warrior. If there is a coup attempt, I see civil war before a dictatorship. You are a right on the mark about Biden and dictatorship.

Chuck Bird

6/6/2020 01:46:44 am

George Friedman said that he blamed the other police who did nothing more that the cop with his knee on Floyd's neck. There was one bad actor. The other two were under his command and had to call him Sir.
Both had not been long on the job.

Edward Cline link

6/6/2020 05:25:38 am

Trump should rid himself of Mattis and Esper. Ed

John Hurley

6/6/2020 05:26:01 pm

I saw a couple of high up millitary men both mentioned "diversity". They used emotional reasoning, the opposite to that prescribed by Jon Haid (CBT)> CBT should be taught in schools.

Haidt also predicts a breakdown of democracy:

Liberal multicultural secular democracy is not a natural occurrence for human nature and trends in America suggest there is a “very good chance” the US democracy will fail in the next 30 years, according to the professor of ethical leadership at New York University, Jonathan Haidt.

In an interview with The Weekend Australian at the start of his visit here on a speaking tour, Professor Haidt said that in his two public lectures in Sydney and Melbourne he would “talk about the problems that have hit us in the United States and how Australia can avoid winding up like us.”

Haidt’s 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, co-written with lawyer Greg Lukianoff, dissects the crisis in the US higher-education system, its central theme being that “good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure.”

But Haidt, a social psychologist based in the Stern School of Business specialising in moral psychology and political, economic and educational systems, argues that the culture war between progressives and conservatives, exacerbated by the impact of social media, is a threat to the US political system.

“I am now very pessimistic,” Haidt said. “I think there is a very good chance American democracy will fail, that in the next 30 years we will have a catastrophic failure of our democracy.

“The current political civil war is between two groups of educated white people with radically different views about what the country is, what morality is and what we need to do to move forward.

“Most Americans are non-political, but in the age of social media they have become like dark matter. The modern civil war is being fought by the extremes.”

Haidt’s thesis originates with humans’ evolutionary journey. He says the “human mind is prepared for tribalism” and that humans are “deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive strategic reasoning.”

The delusion is to believe that liberal, secular, multicultural democracy is a natural condition for human nature. Haidt says this is false. The achievement of our democratic model based on diversity is a “miracle” that is far more fragile than we realise.

He warns that the mixture of social media, eruption of common enemy identity politics, and entrenched rival moralities of progressives and conservatives is provoking a reversion to tribalism.

“We just don’t know what a democracy looks like when you drain all the trust out of the system,” Haidt said.

His 2012 book The Righteous Mind identified the moral conflict now undermining the culture.

The progressive/conservative struggle is turning into a perceived conflict between good and bad people, the sure path to greater division and breakdown.
The Australian

Olivia

6/6/2020 10:46:59 pm

John,

Excellent comment and POV from Haidt - thanks for posting it.

6/6/2020 08:26:22 pm

Are you Ed Cline of Sparrowhawk fame, and the spiritual father of Jack Frack? If you are, I wonder what your thoughts are in regard to the moribund Objectivist movement that once held out so much hope for the future but now has faded into obscurity with bumbling Yaron Brook and the sexual neuter, Amy Peikoff, as the main symbols?

6/6/2020 10:43:49 pm

Howie,

Ed sent this to my email, for some reason his posts in the last few days are intermittently not getting through to the board:

"Yes, I am that same Edward Cline of semi-famous Sparrowhawk fame. Ed."

6/6/2020 10:49:26 pm

Howie,

...and it was Jack Frake. :-)

Max Sky

6/6/2020 10:14:42 pm

Great article Olivia I see truth and strength within it.
I listen to and read George Friedman regularly,often his predictions are wrong, along with a lot of other people who have the back up knowledge and retention of history, conversely sometimes they are correct ! But who can predict anything accurately ? To me a lot of geopolitical forecasting is like crystal ball gazing 'with a better antennae' fortunate when sometimes things fall into place with a little bit of luck. However George's apathy about American's lack of appetite for socialism surprised me, however his views on the strength of China I do agree with, having dealt with and visited them in business for many years.
We need an opposition leader with Mongrel and tenacity, just like Trump, a true leader for our times of strife that are to come.
However most New Zealanders, that I know, are either fooled by Jacinda but also openly detest the POTUS with a group-think attitude, and would most probably apathetically capitulate to their socialist fate, just like the British tried to do with Hitler, before Churchill was called to defend them.
Let us remember Ardern only took over from Little on 1st August just before the election in September. Time for the right person to step forward and defend us, otherwise we are done

6/6/2020 10:45:51 pm

Max,
thanks.

I agree that Friedman was excellent on China in this interview with Leighton - made much sense.

7/6/2020 08:25:58 pm

Stiffen your wrist, Lady Olivia. Frick, Frake, Funt...who cares? I praised your fantastic article and you say nothing in regard to this but respond with a spelling correction of Cline's hero. Anyway, your concern about a military coup is well taken and always a possibility. However, the military brass are well paid and are openly sought after in retirement by corporations doing business with the military. Will they risk all this for armed resurrection? If they fail, they risk the rest of their life in prison. Besides, the elite military units are highly patriotic and tend to be independent. Will they actively move against DJT?

What DJT needs is a well-trained intellectual army to advance his cause. Rand envisioned this with her New Intellectual but her Fidel and Che Guevara, Petulant Peikoff and Rambo Binswanger, were sorely lacking in regards to mass psychology. DJT is winning with a skeleton political ideology. Imagine what 20 Ayn Rand types could accomplish, or 10 more clones of strong-wristed Lindsay Perigo?

7/6/2020 09:29:16 pm

“Howie”

Oh groany groan, yes, I’ve heard you talk this way many times, yet you never appear on the strong-wristed Solo site, by design of course, because you are the proverbial limp-wristed damsel. But I don’t mind too much because your grammar is so wonderfully close to perfect, it’s gold. :-)

And while I’m on you, you timorous little troll who goes by a hundred pseudonyms, you will never understand the importance of getting a great character’s name right because true names are just not your thing. But trust me, when an author like Ed Cline goes to the monumental effort of creating a hero as loveable and tough as Jack Frake, the spelling of his name matters, and a sense of courtesy on your part ought to consider this point.

Complementing me on my articles here is the very least that those who play hidey-go-seek on the internet should do from the luxury of anonymity, since it happens to be the “silent majority” that is actually killing us. I have more balls than you old Boomer poofters put together, and I know you know it.

But, as already noted, so nice of you to at least comment in the erudite manner that you do... do it wholeheartedly or don’t do it at all.

Strong-wristed Howie

8/6/2020 02:53:16 pm

Have it your way Queen Olivia. No doubt I am an "old Boomer poofter" whatever that means but my wrists are strong and eager and I protest strongly your reference to me as a "limp-wristed damsel."

Unfortunately, I can't help myself because I am in love with your writing. Lindsay is, of course, the master but he drifts off into "pomowacking" fantasy too many times. Other than the magnificent Olivia what are the choices--Amy Peikoff the sexual neuter who seems to be less competent than Yaron, and horror of horrors, uglier?

My intention was to compliment the old warrior Ed Cline and seek his wisdom, but you never gave me the chance.

9/6/2020 05:26:28 am

If only Jacinda were Trump's press secretary/public relations officer, instead of Prime Minister of NZ, both countries could be happier places, the whole world could be a happier place. But that would burst her little bubble.

10/6/2020 02:17:52 pm

Olivia....I discovered the meaning of poofter yesterday, a word I had never encountered before. For a person who appears to be a friend of Lindsay, you have a rather demeaning view of men, who by no fault of their own, fail your standards of masculinity.

Another thing, you not only don't have more balls than me, you have no balls at all being a woman. What is more, the expression is archaic and ignorant, responsible for untold numbers of young boys ruining their lives trying to prove they "have balls."

In regards to your writing, it is the best I have witnessed in the Objectivist world. I am talking style, power, importance of material and the reality-bound knowledge of the author. You are the only author I know of who resembles Rand in the power of your message, your writing imploding with individualism of thought instead of Objectivist-approved tripe.

However, you seem to be uncomfortable with praise and like to fight against someone who is definitely an ally.

10/6/2020 09:52:36 pm

OK... “Howie” - thank you from the bottom of my terribly heartless heart.
:-)

11/6/2020 12:38:31 am

Olivia....I love Lindsay's writing. It is like wandering in the desert only to stumble upon an oasis-ridden paradise. I love your writing also. I can't help myself even though you are, no doubt a "terribly heartless heart."

Your above heavyweight article about the generals, which peaked my interest, was top of the line. Who of all your followers praised you for the insight? Anyway, Lara Logan, a gutsy gal perhaps of your liking, is offering up parallel information to your article that may be of interest to you about Mattis, McMaster and McChrystal.

11/6/2020 11:45:23 pm

Interesting that Lara Logan is on this as well. Still calling herself “Lara Logan - No Agenda.” Very try-hard in this disgustingly woke climate, she will soon have a big agenda and it won’t be Biden’s. She should get honest. Her personal history in the Middle East is so horrifically tragic that she should be especially attuned to the ugliness of multiculturalism.

Dennis Stamey, MA

28/6/2020 08:42:35 pm

Excellent, excellent article! Yes, we could be on the verge of a revolution, a revolution that because of its angry rhetoric could lead to a totalitarian regime. But for a revolution to succeed, it must penetrate all facets of society. Liberalism has certainly penetrated education, the arts, the media,sports but not religion nor can it. The message is anathema to Christianity. That's probably why these radicals are urging churches to be dismantled. Churches are the last holdout. Moreover, the 2020 revolt has a carnival atmosphere like the 1968 Paris uprising. People don't take this stuff seriously after a while, novelty changes to boredom. Hopefully, we are safe for now even if Biden is elected.

30/6/2020 05:04:10 pm

Dennis,
How will you possibly be safe if Biden wins? He will hand power straight to a radical activist like Harris, Warren - or whomever is named as his Veep.
Then BLM will be totally politically endorsed.
Pardon my French, but you’d be fucked.

30/6/2020 05:28:33 pm

Olivia: enjoyed this article, and appreciated this sentence:: Rand goes on to explain that all the totalitarians require is your indifference. But I observe that indifference in many people today, and it saddens me..

Can a Dictatorship Happen in America?

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