Atlantic writer Adam Serwer writes American presidents have always defined tyrants “by their willingness to use military force against their own people in reprisal for political opposition.” Ronald Reagan declared “it is dictatorships, not democracies, that need militarism to control their own people." Bill Clinton justified military strikes against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein claiming Hussein used his nations arsenal “against his own people.” George W. Bush later repeated that same argument when invading Iraq in 2003.
“A leader who uses military force to suppress their political opposition forfeits the right to govern. You could call this the ‘tyrant test,’” said Serwer, “and Trump is already failing it."
Trump’s recent targeting of California is no accident.
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“If L.A. had been taken over by insurrectionist mobs, the Trump modus operandi would be to pardon them and give them money,” Serwer writes, but that’s not the treatment Trump delivered. For the first time, U.S. Marines detained an Army veteran, in apparent violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
Of course, Trump was failing tyrant tests before the L.A. protests, Serwer said. The president praised China’s crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protest, claiming it “put it down with strength.” And last week, Serwer said he warned that anyone who protested his “self-worshipping military parade would be met ‘with very big force.’”
“How did Republicans go from condemning leaders who threaten their own citizens to becoming sycophants for one,” Serwer asks. The answer appears to be multiculturalism couched in a “third-world” label. Attorney General Pam Bondi said L.A. “looked like a Third World country” on Fox News. Miller posted on X that “huge swaths of the city where I was born now resemble failed third world nations.”
“In the view of these officials and commentators, California (and, by extension, America) has been ruined by immigration from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, which is what makes mass deportation and the use of American military force against their own people necessary,” Serwer said. “… Both inside and outside the administration, the consensus of prominent Trumpists is that if you are not white, you are a threat to Western civilization. This is how they rationalize Trump failing the tyrant test — the threat of military force is being made against people the administration and its propagandists want you to see as not truly American.”
"It’s classic tyrant thinking,” says Serwer. “Every dictator who has ever cracked down on political opposition has done so by rendering them internal foreigners in rhetoric and deed, invaders of the body politic who can justly be crushed like insects.”
Read the full Atlantic report at this link.