The Irresistible Temptation Of Autocracy - America Joins Russia And China In A Triumvirate Of Power

'Quite a guy', said Donald Trump after a recent two hour phone conversation with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. 

 

Trump had always admired Putin, although he kept his feelings pretty much to himself since he wanted to be the world leader who resolved the Ukraine conflict.  'Quite a guy' was the least of it. Putin was a leader in the mold of another of Trump's favorites, Genghis Khan who swept out of the steppes with his Mongol-Turkic armies and conquered the world from Europe to the Far East.  Putin had neither the power nor the enabling circumstances to extend Russia's reach much beyond its borders, but there was no doubt that he had more than Ukraine in mind. 

Forget the hegemony thing. Complete, unchallenged, doctrinaire authority over his country and the former Soviet satellites was quite enough.  America was a fractious mess, and as much power as a president might have, he was still beholden to the other two branches of government; and in Trump's case neither the Congress nor the Supreme Court were doing him any favors.

Winston Churchill had once said that democracy was the worst form of government except for all the rest; and Trump was beginning to believe that only the first part of that famous aphorism was true.  What had democracy gotten us, he confided to insiders, other than a bunch of fractious fools howling and bellowing that 'democracy matters' when they didn't have a clue about disciplined governance. 

He on the other hand knew that democracy at best was a tool to be used in clement political weather, a reward for the fidelity and patriotism necessary to rebuild American into the world's most powerful nation. 

Alexander Hamilton had it right in one - popular democracy is an idealist's fantasy, a political chimera, and if governance or political representation was left in the hands of the unmediated electorate, nothing but stupidity would result.  He argued for some intermediating body to leaven the hysteria of the mob, but the only compromise achieved with Jefferson was the Senate, as lowdown and venal as the House, without the high-toned intellectual and social elite that he had envisaged. 

The British tried democracy under Oliver Cromwell but after a short time of chaotic misgovernance, voted to restore the monarch and return sense, authority, and higher order civilized rule to the land.  Democracy, in other words, is not the be-all and end-all of governance, but a variant. 

China, a one-party state ruled by the Communist party but under reformist rule has turned the country into an economic powerhouse, capitalist and entrepreneurial, and socialist in name only.  Democracy was an unnecessary hindrance in China's determination to raise hundreds of millions out of poverty, create an unequalled financial and economic power which would dominate world politics and commerce. 

Trump sat with his innermost economic, financial, and political advisers discussing his Administration's geopolitics and foreign policy.  What were we doing fighting with Russia and China when they were clearly the world's comers, forces to be reckoned with thanks to their will, their patriotism, and most of all their imperial past. 

It was no surprise that Putin and Xi were authoritarian figures in the mold and measure of emperors, kings, and courtiers, and whose cultural center was unshakably moral.  The Chinese had not only never forgotten their Confucian past, but embraced it.  It was still the heart and soul of the nation.  Putin had never once forgotten his own imperial legacy and the greatness of Czarist Russia and the Orthodox Church.

These two powers were destined by history, culture, and political will to dominate world affairs for a century or more.  Imperialism, not democracy, had produced the world's great civilizations and from Mohenjo-Daro and the Aryans, Persia, the Guptas, the shoguns of Japan, the kingdoms of Louis XIV and Henry VIII, and the powerful papal rule of the Vatican.  Democracy, not the end of history as the discredited historian Francis Fukuyama wrote, but a sidelight, no more than a temporary historical aberration. 

 

Why has Islam become the new world religion, a socio-political force changing the face of Europe, consolidating power and influence in the Middle East and even extending its rule throughout South and Southeast Asia? There is not one iota, not one scintilla of democratic sensibilities in the religion, nor has there ever been ever since Muhammed and his legions marched out of Arabia north to Jerusalem and west through North Africa to Europe.  The religion is the basis for Islam's geopolitical oligarchy - the goal is a universal world Muslim caliphate.

As such it shares much with the authoritarian regimes of China and Russia - a political movement with a religious-philosophical-cultural foundation, the perfect storm for unstoppable expansion and hegemony. 

Now Trump began the expansionist phase of his thinking.  He moved to consolidate power in America, return it to its formalist doctrinal roots, and stop the fractious social balkanizing of the country.  He would neither tolerate any fractious identity groupings nor brook any opposition to his originalist vision. He like Putin would ignore the parliamentary procedures that were obstructionist, not compromising, in nature.  

The rabble of Congress - intellectual thugs at best, toadying fools at worst - would be overridden by executive authority.  The President commands the army, controls the treasury, and is above judicial censure.  The courts have no armed militias to enforce their judgments, there are no politically organized factions in the barracks, and opposition to the assertion of executive authority is insignificant. 

Democrats will cry foul, but will be venting to the four winds.  They, a neutered, compromised, powerless lot may bellow and holler but to no avail.  

Of course this transformation would be done over time, but by the end of Trump's third or fourth term at the latest, his transformation of the faux democracy of America will be complete, and he will become senior partner in the new world triumvirate. 

Traditionalists have assumed that the American public will never stand for such intimidating takeovers of power, but they grossly misjudge it.  Half the American electorate voted for Donald Trump and have no issues with his virtual demolition of government, a move which will free them and return the country to its originalist roots; so any further moves to restructure and reconfigure governance itself will be considered part of a necessary remake of the republic.  

Remember, reminded Trump, that hundreds of millions of Chinese are quite happy living within a government which in a short few decades has returned the country to wealth, security, and geopolitical prominence; and remember that the Russians are just as happy to see a return to the glories of their country's imperial past. 

 

On a less grand scale, El Salvadorans are cheering their President Bukele for his extra-judicial prosecution and internment of the formerly unchallenged gangs of the country.  Filipinos had the same respect for and fidelity to former President Duterte who vowed to eliminate crime and terrorism from the land.  The arrogation of power by nationalist governments in Europe, far from questioned, is applauded.  Unchecked immigration, largely by Islamic radicals transforming Christian Europe into an Islamic caliphate, must be stopped, and the fiercely conservative politicians of the continent are unchallenged in their defiance. 

 

'Watch this space', said President Trump after yet another DOGE cleansing of the federal bureaucracy; and as the machinery of true internal change fired up. 

'Democracy Matters' says a sign on the lawns of every upscale, deeply and uniformly progressive neighborhood in Washington; but within the inner chambers of the White House, everyone knew that it was only a matter of time that they all would come down. 

Now, this is not a cautionary tale nor a shot over the bow.  This reformation is not the upsetting of George Washington's applecart, nor a return to unchecked predatory Robber Baron capitalism, nor will it usher in pogroms or a latter day Kristallnacht.  The country will be the same dynamic place it always has been but because everyone will be rowing the trireme together, abandoning the false idealism of fraternity, and subscribing to rules of power and authority, it will be once again a force to be reckoned with.  The partnership with China and Russia, a triumvirate of shared authoritative power will be never before seen in world history.