Can a Despised Autocrat Consolidate Power? | Hacker News Reader

Can a Despised Autocrat Consolidate Power?

paulkrugman.substack.com

21 pointsndsipa_pomu19 comments

Of course he can. He feeds off of hate.

Maybe a better question is whether the U.S. people will stand up and depose him?

Why would they? A majority either voted for him, or didn't vote against him.

This would have been the easiest way to get rid of him, but not enough people bothered. Why would you expect them to do something harder now?

For starters, if their skin isn't white or their gender not male, then they should expect to be rounded up at some point for forced labour or reproduction.

It's not gonna get that bad, it's a slow creep to his 3rd term and election control by the federal government. Hopefully he isn't able to run again.

It appears that you're (I'm in the UK) not even a year into his term and yet there do seem to be a lot of people being rounded up on the pretence of them being resident illegally, and I think there's just been a ruling that racial profiling is back on the menu.

I also have my doubts about what would happen if he makes up some bullshit excuse to stay in power for a third term - who would actually remove him from office?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/us/politics/supreme-court...

> A majority either voted for him, or didn't vote against him.

The majority did vote against him. He won in 2024 with 49.8% plurality.

That was a great question to ask 4 years ago, but I feel like we've already gotten an answer at this point.

4 years ago? That was when Biden was president - are you suggesting that Biden was an autocrat consolidating power? (If so, he was remarkably bad at it)

I think he meant would people stand up at the polling booth to oppose him, instead they supported him.

I see. Arguably he wasn't a despised autocrat four years ago.

(As an outsider, I still find it unbelievable that so many people would vote for him)

January 6th was in 2021, 4 years ago today Trump was 9 months out from having perpetrated the Big Lie about the 2020 having been stolen, attempted to alter the results through spurious legal means, and incited a mob to storm the capitol in order to prevent the official electoral vote count.

In my book, if people took liberal democracy serious, he should have been persona-non-grata in the eyes of every politician and political party.

Instead he was saved from impeachment by McConnel rehabilitated by McCarthy, and people increasing memory-holed the event, equivocated about George Floyd protests (not even remotely comparable), or were supporters of the "heroes of J6"... now we are where we are, well-cooked frogs in a pot that's about the boil over.

I agree - that was a clear demonstration of the rule of law just being ignored or at least not enforced. I also don't understand how he could appear on any ballots after his various rape charges and felonies - that should preclude people from any position of responsibility.

People conflate hate with deposition but like I said these guys feed off hate by way of algorithms

It's not just him, it's the whole base that does this. Taking a cue from the most infamously persecuted person in history, Jesus Christ, that's what they're going for. The more hate, the stronger their resolve. Hate is the fuel that keeps the whole engine running, so low public support will do nothing to slow this process down. It will only fuel it.

Think about that photo of blood coming from a nicked ear evoking Jesus Christ on the cross. That's the photo that made him into a god and won him the election. It's all about the persecution.

Can a powerful person consolidate power if no one stops them?

Yes!

Is "despised" jumping to conclusions here a little? There's a selection of stats showing, at face value, a number of his actions are unpopular.

But (a) there's always spread on survey values, so this could be cherry picked / optimistic reading, (b) people's sympathies en masse are not super logical, but rather emotional. He was never elected for rational reasons. People just like him and like his "vibe", and I can imagine they will continue to like him even while he saws at the branch they are sitting on.

Obviously only up to a point, and I'm confident that point will come, but it's not obvious to me (IANAAmerican) that it's there yet.

He is literally the least popular president in the history of polling. His popularity highs are abysmal. https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/presidential-approval/highsl...

It took a second to see what you were referring to. He has never had an approval rating above 50%. Even Joe Biden, whom Republicans utterly despised and Democrats never loved, got over 60%.

Though that's a bit misleading. It was all downhill from there. People thought he handled COVID pretty well at the beginning, but once the lockdowns started to ease, he fell down into basically the same range Trump is now. He left with a 38% approval rating, same as Trump today.

Never getting above 50% certainly does seem to place Trump in a special category of dislike. But he does at least have some support -- the lowest approval rating ever was for Bush 43 at 19% (leading to speculative articles about what that 19% could possibly find to like).

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