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The people’s tyrant: what Plato can teach us about Donald Trump
Sean Illing
Plato thought political regimes followed a predictable evolutionary course, from oligarchy to democracy
to tyranny. Oligarchies give way to democracies when the elites fail, when they become spoiled, lazy,
profligate, and when they develop interests apart from those they rule.
Democracies give way to tyrannies when mob passion overwhelms political wisdom and a populist
autocrat seizes the masses. But the tyrant is not quite a tyrant at first. On the contrary, in a democracy
the would-be tyrant offers himself as the people’s champion. He’s the ultimate simplifier, the one man
who can make everything whole again.
Sound familiar?
With Trump, we have a glimpse of what this sort of evolution looks like: A vulgar right-wing populism
emerges out of a whirlwind of anti-establishment hysteria; a strongman fascist promises to stick it to the
elites and says only he can make the country great again; he gives the people a familiar boogeyman, some
alien other, on whom they can dump their resentment.
For a fractured and embittered citizenry, this is a rhetorical balm, and, according to Plato, just the sort of
thing that sends the city over a cliff.
The American founders were skeptical of democratic rule for all the reasons Plato spelled out. They
created a firewall against the tyranny of the majority, which is why we have a republic instead of a direct
democracy.
Trump is the firebrand they feared.
You might see his political existence as our democracy's response to its own decay. People no longer
believe in the authority of public institutions, which amounts to a loss of faith in constitutional democracy.
That Trump made it this far proves that the country can be whipped into a frenzy and that fascism is only
an election away.
If Trump fails, it won’t be because he was too illiberal or too anti-democratic but because he self-
sabotaged, because he was too incompetent to execute his half-baked vision. But it’s easy to imagine a
future Trump, a candidate who shares his tyrannical nature but is skilled enough to capture a plurality.
Perhaps we’ll survive this time, but we walked right up to the edge of the abyss. Next time we may tumble
into it.
This emotional incontinence is what sets Trump apart as a uniquely tyrannical figure. To watch him on
stage is to witness a frenzied parade of inner consciousness. He’s simply incapable of restraining himself,
and all of his “handlers” have learned this the hard way.
He has very few actual friends because other people are ornaments for him. He treats women as
playthings. He mocks the disabled. He encourages supporters to “knock the crap” out of protesters. He
even withdrew medical benefits for his nephew’s infant child as retaliation for a dispute over his father’s
estate.
Pathology is the only term for this kind of behavior.
As Plato predicted, Trump’s tyrannical psyche manifests in his political views. He has proposed killing the
family members of terrorists; waterboarding suspects because “they deserve it anyway”; refused to
accept the results of a free and fair election; toyed with deploying nuclear weapons in regional conflicts;
suggested banning all Muslims from the country; and said a federal judge’s Mexican heritage disqualifies
him from office. This list hardly captures all of Trump fascistic musings, but the point is obvious enough.
This is a man with no respect for democratic norms, no understanding of compromise, no sense of
inclusiveness, and, worst of all, no self-awareness. His burning ignorance is matched only by his baseless
confidence. “Nobody knows the system better than me,” he said during his convention speech, “which is
why I alone can fix it.” [Emphasis mine.]
The tyrannical drive cannot be distilled any better than that.
Indeed, with Trump we see the transition from democracy to tyranny in real time. And his message
resonates for reasons familiar to Plato: Trump is a reflection of the people to whom he appeals. What
distinguishes him from his followers is wealth and celebrity, but it’s his ingratiating crudity that does the
real work.
A democratic tyrant slips into power by dint of deception: He is usually rich, but he carries himself as a
commoner. “In the early days of his power,” Plato writes, “he is full of smiles, and he salutes every one
whom he meets … making promises in public and also in private, liberating debtors, and distributing land
to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so kind and good to everyone.”
But the honeymoon is brief. The populist begins as the people’s champion; later, having tasted power, he
becomes their tyrant.