Here I will try to explain the idea of tyranny to white Americans. None of what follows is especially unique or revelatory, but I do try to tie together some disparate trends. Of necessity, I make some sweeping generalizations.
Most white Americans have no experience of, and very little knowledge about, tyranny.
But, most Americans of color, and some white women, have clear and precise knowledge of tyranny from our system. We tyrannize Americans of color every day. For a long time, we restricted tyranny to Black Americans, but recently we have expanded our tyranny to include most minorities.
White Americans know that and choose to ignore it.
As a white American man, I have no direct experience of tyranny, but I have read about political tyrannies in other countries for a few years. Please allow me to offer the thoughts below.
trump did not invent tyranny but he recognized the tyrannical tendencies in the USA and exploited them. Regardless of where he ends, we have ingrained those tendencies in our character.
Tyranny is a fundamental human experience. Throughout history, kings and warlords have tyrannized tribes and countries, beginning before written history and continuing today.
Democracy in the USA and some other countries is an historic anomaly - we escaped subjection to tyrants as an historical accident. We were lucky and fortunate.
Tyranny is a system in which a single person, or a very few, holds absolute power over the population. Tyrants can, and do routinely: insult, rob, abuse, degrade, imprison, poison, torture, humiliate and murder any subject with no consequence. An example: Jeffrey Epstein dies while in Federal custody. Another: Russian Putin critic Navalny is imprisoned and mysteriously gets a horrible disease that may kill him soon.
Tyrants routinely persecute any subject who objects to their tyranny and favors anyone who supports it.
A tyrant says: do what I ask and I will protect you, i.e., Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. If you do not support me, then see above for my remedies.
Tyrants and those aspiring to tyranny value that absolute power over any other value. A person aspiring to tyranny will say or promise anything that will improve their chance of obtaining power. In a representative government, tyrants have to secure followers who will support their power aspirations. However, make no mistake; once a tyrant achieves power, all promises are off the table.
Many naive Americans think they will get a prize when a tyrant achieves the power he seeks. We call these foolish people 'useful idiots'. They will be 'thrown under the bus' sooner than they think.
Our American system in the 21st Century AD has some built in advantages favoring a tyrant.
Race
Foremost among the advantages to tyrants is American racism. Many Americans are racists who believe that non-white Americans must be controlled and/or tyrannized to prevent them from taking power and damaging white Americans. While this is utter nonsense, it underlies many actions and beliefs of some white Americans. Today's concerted attempts to restrict voting access by minorities is blatant racism.
Inequality
Our economic system is tilted toward inequality, favoring rich people and harming working people. The concentration of wealth and incomes in the top few has left the majority of people in dire straits and given the top few ability to control the system in their favor. At the same time, many undereducated people are left destitute; the pandemic has increased the divisions.
Police control
The USA is a security state with local police, state police, county sheriffs, highway patrol, FBI, NSA, etc, etc. That system can tyrannize any citizen at any time, backed by the force of law and the judicial system. If a tyrant controls that system, he can create a tyranny.
Do we have hope?
Our collective naivte leads us to assume the system is benign and to ignore its obvious flaws.
Yes, we can hope. We have a robust system filled with people of good will who are dedicated to democracy and the rule of law. Tyrants want to use that system against democracy, but so far the system has held. It will continue to hold, provided that we recognize the parts of the system which favor tyranny.
