To the editor:
My husband and I spoke with a local who argued that the USA is not a dictatorship. He described what his family escaped and said the USA is “not that bad.”
My husband explained that no dictatorship is that bad in the beginning and asked if he would have liked it if citizens had stepped up in the early days to prevent his country’s takeover. “Of course!” was his reply.
While Cubans, Venezuelans, Koreans, and Chinese wouldn’t recognize the U.S. government as a full dictatorship at present, a consensus among experts notes the continuous shift toward authoritarianism using made-up crises.
America is not Nazi Germany, Communist Cuba, China, or Socialist Venezuela, but the USA is already on the slippery slope toward an American version of dictatorship, controlling politics through an inner circle and repressing opposition with increased military deployment, decreased freedoms, all in the name of national security or crime reduction.
Reputable politicians and scholars say Trump’s and his administration’s unilateral decisions have brought the U.S. into an authoritarian model, damaging U.S. norms, leading toward a centralized system of rule over state and local governments. There go States’ Rights!
What a distraction from the Epstein files, the rising cost of living, and the fourth government shutdown under Trump’s leadership (Three in his first term, and here we go again)!
The Founding generation understood “dictatorship” as a temporary safeguard to preserve liberty during a crisis, a concept that was intentionally excluded from the U.S. Constitution. The Roman model of dictatorship was ultimately omitted from the U.S. Constitution after a concerted campaign by influential figures like Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams.
Federal judges, many state and local governments, and the media should be barriers to a complete power grab, but are failing.
Midterm elections in August 2026 can begin to turn society back to an assemblance of balance.
Karyn Edison
Fort Myers