Trump has no interest in being president.  He envies Putin and he wants to put himself and his family in the same position over here. It’s really quite ideal.  Nobody mocks Putin (and lives), nobody questions him, and he’s free to huddle with his oligarchs and plot the course they see fit.

This explains a lot

It’s just a theory.  But it’s unfortunately no stretch at all to fit it to the known facts.

theory (noun)

a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.

Trump is a con man

To a con man, words are just a tool.  They mean absolutely nothing.  This explains how Trump can profess so many contradictory views on things.  He says what people want to hear in order to get them to do what he wants. He has no intent whatsoever of doing what he says or making good on those promises.  Tomorrow they will be different.  He knows, he doesn’t care.

He is a con man, megalomaniac, sociopath, narcissist.  It’s a perfect psychological profile for a dictator.

Trump wants to be dictator period

As we all slip into the comfortable mode of discussing the issues, analyzing the political winds blowing through the two parties, and of course trying to extract meaning and intent from his tweets, Trump has a completely different agenda. He will occasionally emit some nugget (a tweet to be sure) about something to nudge us along the path of thinking about business as usual, the ACA, Social Security, trade, what have you.  That’s exactly what he wants and it buys him time.  But that’s not his focus.

He doesn’t attend intelligence briefings because, in general, he doesn’t want to become embroiled in the role of a normal president.  That would not leave him time for his real endeavors.

He wants to be a dictator, and like all dictators he’s doing it because he feels he is innately “right” about things.  He feels a sense of manifest destiny. It falls to him to get things done  and done right around here.  He’s proved, with great irony by his own election, that those happy happy joy joy democracies make really bad decisions and that “group think” does not arrive at reasonable conclusions.  Not like his smart mind.

So he works to undermine the traditional media, calls into question the CIA, and flouts any government rule making bodies which might stand in his way.  He’s put in place folks to run those agencies that despise those same agencies.  If folks think he’s controversial, heck, he’s just shaking things up.

Hiding in plain sight

But wait, you say, he’s doing all this in a very visible way.  That is true.  He knows the best way to get away with something is just do it overtly, but do it in the midst of so much other confusion and noise that it gets overlooked.

He thrives in an environment of confusion and panic. He knows that while all those around him feel adrift, there’s no better time to set your sails and grab for what you want.  This is how he has run his businesses.  The folks at the top have always felt a great deal of uncertainty, there’s been a lot of back stabbing, and it all boils down to how the boss views it that day.  Even bankruptcy is a welcome form of chaos for him.

He needs something dramatic to justify his actions to take over.  A terrorist attack on American soil could work.  Or, admittedly it sounds a little paranoid, a nuclear exchange might suit his needs.  Great chaos, a common enemy, the need for strong leadership, that could work for him.

Not business as usual

Do not be lulled into thinking that Trump cares that Bernie wants to make him keep his promises.  Those are just words, they’re meaningless. He never intended for one minute to do anything he’s said.  No talk about about walls (wait, this just in, the wall is a being talked about again but we’re paying for it and it might be a fence).  “Lock her up” is already acknowledged to be in the dust bin.  No Muslim registries.  Now to be fair, as he officially starts his term (amazingly enough it hasn’t started yet) he may make some more pronouncements about his goals, but those will just be a means to buy more time and distract us.

“But what about our system of checks and balances?” you ask.  No checks and balances have yielded a spark of resistance yet. The GOP was happy to be his lap dog.  The electoral college waved him to the finish line.  The Clintons will attend his inaugural ball.  Just the beginning of a normal presidency. Nothing to see here.

The path ahead

All that said, the path to dictatorship is not at all certain or without peril. But it’s much easier than we imagine, having lived our lives in the pleasant cocoon of democracy.  Probably the only thing really working against him is time, that old ticking clock.  He’s got two years until we can vote in some folks to replace his lap dog congressmen, if we can get past the gerrymandering. He himself is fairly old.So be prepared for him to move quickly.  No messing around.  The revolution will only appear briefly on your Facebook feed.

And then he’ll do one thing we can all get behind — eliminate political discussion from Facebook.

Postscript

This may all sound a little paranoid but it’s becoming a more and more real possibility and is being talked about by some very respectable sources.

How Republics End – NY Times

Trump’s First Move – Huffington Post

American Dictator – Washington Post

Auditioning to be Dictator – Raw Story

Trump’s Threat to Jail Clinton – CNN

Dictator in Waiting – LA Times

Search on “Trump dictator” – Bing

It being even more widely referred to with such euphemisms as “protect democracy” and easy to swallow references to losses of freedom.  But the worse thing you can do is to not thinking about it, and then congratulations, you’re doing exactly what he wants.