The left just loves to claim that President Trump is some sort of dictator. They love to claim he sits at the head of a totalitarian government. That's poppycock, of course. The notion is easily dispelled by pointing out that, were President Trump a totalitarian dictator, one wouldn't be allowed to call him a totalitarian dictator.
Dictatorships, from Rome to the present day, are notoriously short on respect for free speech.
Let's be real about this: If any totalitarian system does come to power here in this nation, it won't be coming from the Republican Party. It's the left - always the left - that does these things. It's the left that is always calling for more government control. It's always the left that wants to throttle dissent by calling it "hate speech." It's always the left that wants to disarm us, to intimidate us, to control us, and to sweep us aside if we oppose them. They can't; in the United States, it's just not that easy.
Let's do a thought exercise. What might an actual totalitarian regime look like if one came to power here? As I see it, and as shown by examples from history, there would be three broad phases.
First: The takeover. However, a totalitarian government comes to power, whether it be by vote, by coup, or some other means. What happens when they assume control? The likely move would be to take control of all of the federal government. Congress is dissolved, and all but a few confirmed fellow-traveler members of Congress are arrested. The Supreme Court is disbanded, and again, the members are arrested. Opposing state governors are arrested - if the takeover comes from the left, that means that the new regime will try to arrest the governors and key officials of states like Texas, Wyoming, Florida, and Alaska. The new regime can't give in, or the whole thing comes apart. Civil war ensues.
Assuming the new regime wins the likely conflict, what next?
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Second: The crackdown. The media, legacy, alternative, and otherwise, is shut down. That especially means alternative media sites like, well, this one. Only state-approved information is disseminated. The internet is heavily filtered, ostensibly to keep out "disinformation" and "hate speech." We already see this in communist countries today: North Korea, China, and Cuba. Major media figures are arrested. A new system of "news" arises: State-sponsored, state-controlled.
To deal with the old red state, blue state dichotomy, the new regime erases former state lines and redraws the country into districts, or soviets, if you like. These would be drawn to minimize the ability of the more independent-minded among the population to form any kind of effective opposition.
The military is "reformed" and put under the control of hand-selected, regime-friendly generals. The rank and file attend forced "re-education" sessions; anyone who resists is imprisoned. Re-education and labor camps are built all across the country, from Boston to San Diego, from San Antonio to Fargo, and they fill up rapidly.
Third and finally: The purge. Anyone suspected of being a troublemaker is... dealt with. This is where the great irony of this sort of thing comes in; all the street-level leftist shouters who, before the takeover, served as useful idiots, working coordinated riots, throwing rocks at cops, and just generally making trouble, are no longer an asset to the regime. They are, instead, known troublemakers. Now they are rounded up. The new regime already has the names of these troublemakers, their locations, and all of their social media traffic. That's more than enough for show trials, perhaps done by military tribunal, perhaps by set-up show courts. In either case, the known troublemakers, the ones who thought they would be running things in the new regime, are now sent to one of the new camps. That is, if they are lucky. The real high-profile ones, the ones that showed any ability to lead others, are far more likely to end up looking at rifles from the wrong side.
But it won't be just the useful idiots who are purged. If you regularly read alternative, conservative media, which you're doing right now, you're suspect. If you ever voted for a Republican, at any level of government, you're suspect. If you own guns - and believe me, the new regime will know - those guns will be confiscated, and a few high-profile people will "resist" and be shot down, and the shootings publicized by state media, pour encourager les autres.
The First and Second Amendments are gone. No free speech, ever again. No freedom of conscience. No right to bear arms. All of the Bill of Rights is gone. The Constitution is suspended. Elections are either cancelled or are one-party, one-choice sham elections.
That's what a dictatorial regime looks like. We have seen this happen, time and again, in Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union, in Mao's China, in Pol Pot's Cambodia, in Castro's Cuba, and in the hereditary dictatorship of the Kims in North Korea. Will it happen here? I don't think so. The United States would be a tough nut to crack, and if nothing else, any such totalitarian regime would likely never be able to gain control of our rank-and-file military and would lose the civil war mentioned above, probably catastrophically.
This is, however, what it would look like if the United States were taken over by an actual totalitarian regime. This is why it's so hard to take the left seriously at times. President Trump, agree with him or not on any given issue, was elected by the constitutional process and is carrying out enforcing laws that were legally enacted by our elected representatives. That's all. He's not a dictator. His administration is not a totalitarian regime. And it's the left, not the right, that would be at the source of any attempt to bring about a dictatorship.
