If you believe we are somehow still living in the same US that conducted elections in November 2024, you are living in a dream. That America is gone. The one we are in now is not run by someone acting like a dictator—or, as Rachel Maddow claimed, “too incompetent” to be a dictator—but is, without a doubt, the real deal. This fact alone explains why the recent “very strong letter” Senator Chuck Schumer sent to Trump was such a howler. Schumer, too, must be dreaming or, worse, has decided to pretend as if he is sleepwalking. Tyrants don’t read letters. And what you will not find in the 100 days Trump has been in the White House is a single indication that he is running the country with any consideration or fear of the public. Voters are no longer a part of his political picture. One man owns this country. This is a dictator. 

Evidence? Well, he himself said to The Atlantic: “I run the country and the world.” And if you do not believe his words, which are brazenly anti-democratic, I will give two clear examples: one that’s material (force) and the other mental (fear). The first example: After refusing an order from the Supreme Court to return Kilmar Ábrego García from a mega prison that’s in El Salvador and, like the Cybertruck, is straight out of an ’80s dystopian film, Trump then arrested Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping an immigrate evade ICE detention, claiming: no one is above the law. Logically, this implies: no one is above Trump—he is the law. All other citizens, no matter what their rank, cannot disobey him.  

The second example: When the self-described “world’s coolest dictator,” El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, visited the White House on April 14, he was told by Trump that American citizens would soon be sent to his mega prison. Now, it doesn’t matter if Trump was joking or not. What matters is he put this into the minds of Americans: You have seen the prison, you have seen what the guards do to prisoners there, you have not seen a single person leave that nightmare. This, my fellow American, could be you. A key (if not the main tool) in a dictator’s box is fear, which functions much in the same way as Foucault’s famous panopticon prison: a space enclosed in such a way that an inmate doesn’t know if they are being watched by a guard or not and so they must, out of fear alone, watch themselves at all times. Trump’s threat has this function. It says: Better watch yourself or else.    

I’m by no means the only one who recognizes the kind of power that’s now occupying the White House. Indeed, some writers have gone so far as to write about how and why the present dictatorship will end. “Tyrants are for toppling,” writes Simon Tisdall of The Guardian, “Their downfall is a saving grace.” 

However, some dictators grow so old they no longer have the power to cling to power. This is exactly what happened to the late Robert Mugabe. After ruling Zimbabwe for a thousand (magical realist) years (40 in real years), he was finally toppled at age 93, and died rather peacefully at the age of 95.  Because Trump’s dictatorship started so late in his life (78), the US, if worse comes to worst, has time on its side. Nature will bring his reign to an end. Zimbabwe’s first dictator (it’s now experiencing its second, Emmerson “The Crocodile” Mnangagwa), began at the age of 56.

Tyrants come in different flavors. Mugabe, for example—who, like Trump, heavily relied on rural support (city people hated him)—was actually a member of the African intelligentsia. He was well read, had the wit of a professor, and spoke English with a command that puts the monolingual Trump in the shade. Other dictators (Idi Amin and Kim Jong-il) are as thick as two planks. Some (the Shah of Iran) are royal in manner and appearance. And so it’s not the character or intelligence of the dictator that counts, but the culture from which they emerge. 

In the case of the US, Trump is only a concentration of what was already well established in his society: the relentless repression of voting rights, institutional racism, systemic misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, an anti-science attitude, and bogus economic reasoning (trickle-down theory, efficient market hypothesis, methodological individualism in the form of the rational actor paradigm). What is, in fact, lacking in Trump’s dictatorship is anything that’s original or drawn from outside of the structure of American history. He is, by all accounts, as American as apple pie.

And I think this is what Americans have to face in the coming years. Even if Trump doesn’t run for a third term and make himself the ruler for what remains of his life,  nothing will really change if the composition of our society isn’t transformed. You will not find a better time to think in this way than right now. 

How can we, once and for all, bring an end to Trumpism? The first step in unseating a dictator is recognizing they are one. The next step is refusing to be ruled by one.