Can a Dictatorship Happen in America?

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"
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