The latest polls show US President Donald Trump continues to trail his Democratic challenger, former vice president Joe Biden. With just a month before the US presidential elections, likely voters have all seemed to have made up their minds, with 51 percent of them favoring Biden and 43 percent of them supporting Trump. A number of national polls fall well within this range, suggesting that very few Americans—under 10 percent–are still undecided.
How their first presidential debate—which often resembled a shouting match between Mr. Trump and the moderator– will swing the outcome is yet to be seen. But what remains unfathomable to observers on the outside looking in is that as many as 43 percent of Americans support a president who has presided over the deaths of 205,000 of their countrymen in a pandemic that could have been brought under control, if only he had listened to the science. Instead, Mr. Trump contradicted his top health advisers and listened to quacks, and turned the simple and effective act of wearing a face mask into a deadly political issue. While medical experts the world over found that wearing a mask would reduce the chances of infection by 65 percent, Mr. Trump mocked his political opponent for wearing one, and his campaign continues to stage large public rallies in which there is no social distancing and where very few wear masks.
This was a president who admitted privately to a journalist as early as February that he knew the coronavirus was deadly and it was airborne, then proceeded to downplay it, promising it would magically disappear, and urging states to reopen without quarantine restrictions.
How is it, we wonder, can so many Americans continue to believe in a president who has time and again been proven to lie to them, not only about the coronavirus, but about his taxes, about Russian interference in their electoral process, and the peaceful protests against police brutality and racial inequality.
How is it that these Americans can stomach a president who describes US war veterans as “losers” and “suckers”?
How is it that so many Americans would vote for a president who has described white supremacists as “good people”?
Among the characteristics of a dictatorship, we often find a cult of personality in which the masses are fed propaganda declaring their leaders as flawless and demonizing the opposition. Check.
Dictators also use their power to control the legislature. Witness the Republican-led US Senate’s blind obedience to Mr. Trump and check this box.
Dictatorships are also marked by systematic efforts to intimidate the media. Mr. Trump, who describes critical reporting as “fake news,” certainly qualifies.
Dictators also weaken institutions of governance and compromise law enforcement agencies to protect people in the ruler’s inner circle. Mr. Trump has turned his Justice Department into his personal legal team, going easy on allies and filing sedition charges against street protesters. He has also subverted institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and even the US postal service, all in hopes of pushing his political agenda forward.
Dictators live on fearmongering, too. Listen to Mr. Trump’s ridiculous warnings about “the radical left” to check this box, too.
Mr. Trump’s shameful performance in the first debate merely reinforces the view by the rest of the world that he is a dangerous demagogue who must be stopped in November. If not enough Americans do this, they will truly get the government they deserve—a third-rate country run by a tinhorn dictator.