NORTH CAROLINA - Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies which give way to tyrannies, claimed the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Is the U.S. there yet? Is the U.S. being overwhelmed by a Trump tyranny?

It’s difficult to say but the U.S. is severely and rancorously split between those who agree with what President Donald Trump and his administration and Republican supporters are doing, and those especially on the side of the Democratic Party, which lost big in last November’s elections. The Democrats claim Trump is tyrannical, and he may well be to some extent given the extreme rapidity he is forcing huge changes in Washington and across the country. Also, notably, Trump addressed the U.S. Congress this week and his speech was horrible. He burned any bridges to his opponents and was insulting to the Democrats. At the least he could have explained to the American people why he has been in a frenzy to cut waste in government. He blew a serious opportunity. 

Trump and his supporters, probably a majority of Americans, would say that “NO” he is not imposing “tyranny” on the country at large. They would say the President is attempting to rectify bad governance and bad policies at home and abroad and deep corruption that has been extant for at least the last 30 years, and much of that corruption burgeoning with the Democratic Party warmongers in Congress and with presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and lately, the brain dead Joe Biden. But Republican Party “leaders” all along have been FAR from faultless, too, in creating the mess and chaos that is a fact of America nowadays. In many instances they have been worse than Democrat leaders. But there is overall and balance of horrors.

Biden was arguably the worst President. In retrospect, he often appeared incapable of rational thinking himself, and he was fed marching orders and what to promote or say from the beginning by his advisors, by his appointees and by so-called “Deep State” ideologues in various departments of governance such as the FBI, the CIA, even the Treasury and other departments.

Complicit with the Biden White House was the mainstream U.S. media — for examples newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post. Those and other formerly magnificent bastions of truth telling which dominated “news”, which this writer well recalls from youth back in the 1970s and earlier, have fallen some but by no means been extinguished. (And most Americans simply do not have the time with families and jobs to tend to  become themselves more than just superficially knowledgeable about world and national issues, and perhaps particularly about other countries including Iran!)

It seems clear that Trump styles himself by experience, history and habit first and foremost a businessman, and he is trying to govern the “business” of America as such, as now the “CEO” of America in his mind. There is no doubt a “dictatorial” if not tyrannical aspect to his attempted management so far as with all potentially effective CEOs who at least nominally are trying to manage properly their organizations. The tyranny angle comes up with Trump’s many detractors often because of his attempts to downsize government where many citizens working in some part of government are getting fired, their lives turned upside down. There are thousands of alleged “victims” of Trump’s White House already after just a few weeks. Biden had little managerial talent and if nothing else aimed to keep going what was in fact a failing status quo in the U.S. But Biden did more and worse: funding and promoting Israel’s genocide and the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Trump is attempting to halt the Ukraine travesty. Credit Trump for trying that.

Trump in any event is not going to make the U.S. “great” again because he cannot if “great” to him means the economic and military hegemony that arose after World War 2. Underneath everything he does is at least some reasonable recognition of a changed world with rising countries like Russia and China and their allies. What he is doing is by pure necessity because the U.S. has been headed to moral and economic bankruptcy for some time. This process has speeded up dramatically this century and may not abate economically given almost $37 trillion in debts and 200 or so trillion bucks in unfunded liabilities. As for the moral rot, that’s Trump’s Achilles heel, most evident in his unchecked support for Israel and his own past personal moral failings. His administration seems Hell bent to criminalize anger and dismay, especially among protesting students and any expressions of that kind. Free speech is becoming far less free over the crimes of Apartheid.

The U.S. under Trump is not a tyrannical monster provided Trump’s moves are strictly aimed at weeding out vast corruption, especially in Washington and restoring some sense and sanity regarding U.S. finances. But it can feel like tyranny to those whose personal lives have been upended by what seems to be at least some recognized necessity to act.