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- Jan 22, 2017
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My point is not that he is a dictator, but he'd like to be. Basically that's just what he's familair with. He was pretty much able to be a dictator as the head of his own family business. Also, if you watched the apprentice, it was apparent how he operated. The first thing a dictator needs to do is establish state control over the media. You can't say he's not trying, but unfortunately for him it's really hard to do. It all started when the media called him out during the campaign when he would say something that was obviously false. He got mad when they did that and did what he always had done in business, attack! In business, he would bully the mostly smaller businesses he dealt with by not paying them, sue them, whatever. Then he gets really mad when he realizes, hey the media aren't backing down, they are fighting back! Of course there are some outlets who are supporting his agenda and they become the good guys. Even some of the people who work for FOX are beginning to get concerned:
"Fox host Shepard Smith slams president, Trump supporters call for his head"
Fox host Shepard Smith slams president, Trump supporters call for his head
Here we have the people clamoring for the news to be censored so that only the state controlled message is getting through! Trump is saying, any negative polls are fake news. All presidents have a love/hate relationship with the press, but the world has not seen this kind of relationship with the press before except in budding dictatorships.
Another thing a dictator can't live with is an independent judicial court. So, same thing, if they cross the dictator we have "so called" judges. Obviously, he would like to have them under his control too.
Congress hasn't been a real problem yet, but they may be in the future. Right now, congress needs his hand to enact legislation, or as Grover Norquest the tax guy said "Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States."
A quote from someone who lived in dictatorships most of her life:
It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy.
We are a much stronger democracy than any of these examples, but we are a weaker democracy than we have been in a long time.
