This is what tyranny looks like

Trump is consolidating power

Today, October 1, The Wall Street Journal has the following headlines:

Lumber Prices Rise on Trump’s New Tariff

EU to Propose 50% Steel Tariffs Outside Quotas, Matching Trump Levies

Trump Order Seeks to Use AI to Help Treat Childhood Cancer

Judge Rebukes Trump Administration’s Efforts to Deport Pro-Palestinian Campus Activists

Trump Unveils Deal With Pfizer, New Website for Cheaper Drugs

Trump says Deal With Harvard Is Near

This is one day’s news. And all these events concern what one man demands and commands.

The pattern is clear. As with monarchs of old, Donald Trump’s domain is . . . whatever he says it is. Tariffs, funding for ivy league colleges, electric vs. gasoline vehicles, arms for Ukraine, whether Israel may take over the West Bank, a comedian’s statements about Charlie Kirk, a Federal Reserve official’s mortgage application—anything and everything has to be pleaded at the monarch’s feet. Pleasing him becomes the primary focus of leaders in business, education, the media, and every walk of life.

Over 60 years ago, this poignant observation was made by Ayn Rand:

It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men’s spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; it has to deal not in death, but in sudden death; a state of chronic uncertainty is what men are psychologically unable to bear. [The Objectivist Newsletter, Feb. 1962]

I don’t think Trump’s switches and leaps are deliberate or calculated. I think arbitrariness “comes naturally” to him. But deliberate or not, what results is journalists, business leaders, university administrators, his old enemies . . . everyone . . . becoming obsessed with Trump’s moods, his latest “Truth Social” outburst, and who is for this split-second in his good graces.

It’s amazing that most of the business/finance news is about the preferences, the demands, the emotions, the whims of Donald Trump. And the journalists and anchors don’t even notice.

Remember none of Trump’s headline-grabbing lurches apply legitimate powers of the president. No American president has any business intervening in the affairs of private entities. The president is the chief executive; he oversees the execution of the law. The goal of the law is: to protect the rights of the individual. But in interfering with, dictating to, lumber buyers, steel producers, Pfizer, Harvard, and campus speakers, Trump is acting not to protect rights but to violate them. He is not securing people’s freedom to act on their own judgment, he is telling them what to do. Headline from Monday:

Trump Calls for Firing of Microsoft Global Affairs Chief.

Still worse is the last of the October 1 stories, the page-one headline is:

President Tells Military Brass To Fight ‘Enemy Within’ U.S.

Trump is trying to turn the military into a force that will follow his orders for “solving problems” inside the country. The first such problem, he says, is crime. But crime has been decreasing for decades. Outside of slum neighborhoods, it is hardly a problem at all. Gemini AI documents statistics available on the web:

Crime has been decreasing in the U.S., with overall violent crime down 4.5% and property crime down 8.1% in 2024 compared to 2023, reaching the lowest rates in decades. Homicides have seen a significant 14.9% drop, . . . Both violent crime and property crime rates have been decreasing over the last few decades, with 2024 reporting the lowest violent crime rate since 1969.

Yes, a president is the commander-in-chief of the military, but he is not chief of police of any locality, let alone of all of them.

The need to fight crime is a pretext. Trump wants the military to act domestically for a different reason: to defend his hold on power. Against what? Free elections.

The preview came on January 6, 2021: fringe Rightists stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election. (Whether or not Trump sponsored this specific mob action, it is his endlessly repeated lie about a “stolen” election that is responsible for the attack on the Capitol, the ensuing deaths of 4 people, and the growing trend toward using violence to settle political disputes.)

It appears likely that Republicans will lose seats in Congress in the midterm elections. That would mean Trump would also lose a considerable amount of power, a turn of events he could not abide. What if, to nullify the midterm election, Trump can call on not just a rag-tag assemblage of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers but the National Guard and the United States Army?

America’s uniqueness comes from the political principles on which it was founded — the fundamental of which is the principle of limited government. In a system of limited government, government officials may do nothing except what is permitted to them. The citizens may do anything that is not expressly forbidden to them.

And, originally, the only thing forbidden was violating someone’s rights—using physical force to infringe on someone’s freedom of action.

The ominous phrase “enemy within” summons the scapegoats, criminals and immigrants, that Trump hopes will provide justification for a masked, secret police (ICE agents) and a military force to enable him to become, like Putin, “president for life.” Of Putin, Trump has said:

He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great... Maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.

In desperation, I will be voting straight Democratic in 2026.