Arizona Eagletarian: Tinpot Dictators 101

It does not take much imagination to conclude Trump is attempting to escalate violence around the country so he can deploy the military. This is the conduct of a tin-pot dictator — someone resorting to violent suppression of our most closely cherished rights.

More than ever, we should all recognize that, as former vice president Joe Biden put it, this is an election about the soul of our country and the survival of peaceful self-governance.

From Wiktionary,

Although still used today, this is a pejorative term coined in the days of the British Empire, when it referred to the Victorian innovation of the tin pot, an inexpensive metal container, the forerunner of the tin can.

Noun

tin-pot dictator (plural tin-pot dictators)
An autocratic ruler with little political credibility and delusions of grandeur.

Economist Ronald Wintrobe, now emerius professor at the University of Western Ontario, in American Political Science Review, September 1990, abstract below from a paper titled The Tinpot and the Totalitarian,

I use basic tools of economic theory to construct a simple model of the behavior of dictatorships. Two extreme cases are considered: a "tin-pot" dictatorship, in which the dictator wishes only to minimize the costs of remaining in power in order to collect the fruits of office (palaces, Mercedes-Benzes, Swiss bank accounts), [think, emoluments including "skimming" hundreds of millions of dollars from the US treasury in rents at his golf resorts when he goes to play, wherever in the world, and rich individuals, businesses and governments wishing to curry favor with this particular VERY "powerful" dictator] and a "totalitarian" dictatorship, whose whose leader maximizes power over the population. I show that the two differ in their responses to economic change. For example, a decline in economic performance will lead a tin-pot regime to increase its repression of the population, whereas it will lead to totalitarian government to reduce repression. The model also shows why military dictatorships (a subspecies of tin-pots) tend to be short-lived and often voluntarily hand power over to a civilian regime; explains numerous features of totalitarian regimes; and suggests what policies will enable democratic regimes to deal with dictatorships effectively.

Just a cursory look seems to indicate that Trump isn't sure which type of dictator he wants to be, at least within the constraints presented by Prof. Wintrobe. At the very beginning of the economic downturn (for which HE is the primary person responsible), he agreed to a short-lived easing of the economic repression. That didn't last.

Given Trump's declaration today that he intends to attack peaceful Americans who protest violence against minorities, he has removed all doubt as to the fact that he indeed intends to be a dictator at all.

From Arizona Republic media reporter Bill Goodykoontz,

Context is everything.

If you had the sound on your television turned down on Monday afternoon, then President Donald Trump’s address from the White House Rose Garden might have been something routine.

It wasn’t.

At all.

Instead, it was surreal and disturbing, even by Trump’s standards. And yet it was just one piece in a series of bizarre developments, a set of photo opportunities sandwiching a statement in which Trump promised to come down hard on protests around the country that turn violent. As cities have convulsed in protest for nearly a week in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, Trump had mostly limited his reactions and statements to tweets.

Not so Monday.

What he said was remarkable enough on its own: “I am your president of law and order,” echoing Richard Nixon, which Trump had already alluded to on Twitter. He said law enforcement would “dominate the streets” — not exactly the note of healing one might have hoped for. Quite the contrary. And then the big news.

“As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the wanton destruction of property,” Trump said. “We will end it now.”

Can anyone rightfully contest my characterization of this madman as a full on Fascist at this point?

But Trump saying he would marshal the U.S. military to potentially use force against American citizens if mayors and governors don’t crack down on them was just part of the weirdness. Before Trump spoke, TV reporters set up in the Rose Garden for the address. Suddenly you could hear explosions nearby.

Cut to law enforcement breaking up a peaceful protest by reportedly firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd. Initially, reporters for cable-news networks, to say nothing of a wave of people on social media, were confused. Why the sudden show of force?

As Trump spoke, the possibilities began to suggest themselves. If Trump knows anything, he knows television and the power of images. If you’re going to make a speech in which you threaten to bring down the might of the U.S. military on your own citizens, then maybe a little pregame display of might would be the optics you were looking for?

Maybe. But when Trump was done speaking, he walked across Lafayette Square to historic St. John’s Church, which had been damaged by fires set by protesters Sunday night.

That’s where the peaceful protesters had been gathered on Monday. [...]

“Peaceful protesters near White House tear-gassed, shot with rubber bullets so Trump can have church photo-op,” CNN said in its chyron across the bottom of the screen. No words minced there.

On MSNBC, reporter Garrett Haake, reporting from around the park, said, “I want to be clear about what happened” among the protesters beforehand. “NOTHING happened.”

Then came the police.

“I’m a little shook by the whole thing,” Haake said.

Trump’s speech came on the heels of a call to governors Monday, where he warned them to toughen up in their response to violent protests. “You have to dominate,” he said during the call. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you. You’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”

Could Trump indeed mobilize federal troops to the states? It seems so, though even Fox News’ Brit Hume wondered, saying Trump was stretching the bounds of his power.

"Stretching the bounds of his power," grossly understated gravity of the situation.

The last few months have been bizarre and hard to comprehend. You can’t really overstate the strangeness of it, whether it’s the global COVID-19 pandemic or the spasms of violence the last few nights.

Monday was a reminder that things can get weirder, still.

“This event, if it wasn’t so dangerous and disquieting? It would be funny, because it is so low-rent and just sad,” Anderson Cooper said on CNN.

This particular display of "low-rent" play acting can be characterized otherwise as, campy,

Camp (n.) and Campy (adj.): Being so extreme that it has an amusing and sometimes perversely sophisticated appeal. Over the top and farcical, intentionally exaggerated so as not to be taken seriously. Found primarily in television, theatre and motion pictures, camp endeavors for satire and, for those who fully understand and appreciate the risible nature of its material, it's not surprising when it develops a cult following.