On Tyranny — a Reprise — with Apologies to Tim Snyder

June 8/9, 2025

ON TYRANNY

[Opinion] by Leland J. Katz

With apologies to Tim Snyder, who is on leave as Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University transferring to the University of Toronto and who is the author of the book On Tyranny, a very worthwhile read.

This essay is about the dangers of the United States becoming an autocratic Fascist dictatorship. It is not a subject Americans like to think about. But the danger is real and forces itself into our consciousness more and more with each passing day. When Donald John Trump became president again on January 20, 2025, he nominated people whose loyalty is to him rather than to the Constitution. Those nominations — Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Pam Bondi as attorney general, and Kash Patel as director of the FBI are confirmed, the guard rails are off, and the Great American Experiment in Constitutional Democracy is on life support. And could well be flat lined if the courts fail or, as is likely, ignored.

Some time between 1957 when I was 18 and 1959 when I was 20, I read Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. Several times. First published in 1940, it tells the story of Soviet tyranny and of tyrants’ need to eat their own in order to maintain their power. The current feud between Musk and Trump could become an example of that. The story is told through the exploits of Rubashov, an old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government he helped create. The story moves from the subversive actions of the Communist International (ComIntern) on the waterfronts of prewar France to the coded tappings of political prisoners trying to maintain their sanity by talking about women they had known. It was my first exposure to the realities of tyranny.

In 1939 I was born into a world on the cusp of war. Mussolini had sent war planes with machine guns against Haile Selassie’s spear wielding Ethiopian tribesmen in 1936. Tojo, acting in the name of the Emperor of Japan, was conquering China and four months after I was born, having bamboozled Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, Hitler invaded Poland cynically splitting that country with Stalin’s Soviet Union.

During the 1930’s, Fascism almost triumphed in this country (see Rachel Maddow’s Prequel for details). But there were giants. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Charles de Gaulle created the alliance (including Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union) that defeated the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

In 1962, I was a 23 year-old U.S. Air Force first lieutenant when, in October, the new, young American president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, faced down Nikita Kruschev over Soviet nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba just 90 miles from the United States. A miscalculation by either side during that face off could have resulted in the civilized world being destroyed by thermonuclear warfare.

By the end of that November I was reassigned from my Stateside post to a British air base in northwestern Germany where I become a nuclear weapons alert duty officer and part of the NATO nuclear strike force defending Western Europe against incursion by the Soviet Union and her Warsaw Pact allies.

Today we teeter on the brink of worldwide armed conflict again. Russia’s illegal and war-crime riddled invasion of Ukraine, Iran’s proxy war through its clients Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others against Israel and the United States and China’s threats against Taiwan are just some of the potential trigger points. And the toppling of the government of the bloody dictator, Bashar al-Assad by organizations designated by both the United States and the United Nations as terrorists further complicates an already overly complex and dangerous Middle East.

Where are today’s equivalents of Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini? Look no further than Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping (North Korea’s not big enough to include Kim Jong Un) plus a wannabe in this country by the name of Donald John Trump who

Is deploying military forces to the streets of the country against our own citizens. That Trump has taken total control of what used to be a reasonably conservative political party called the GOP is an existential threat to American democracy. As the Republican Party unquestioningly follows Trump over a Fascist cliff and not only excuses the actions of Vladimir Putin in both Russia and in Ukraine but suppresses knowledge of those actions. Today we need Republicans in the United States Senate to remember they are Americans first.

One day in February, 2024, I woke up to the news that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny had died in prison at 47. It was suspected that Putin had finally succeed in poisoning him. The only viable opposition to Putin in Russia, he represented Russia’s only hope for democracy. Putin’s “party” had put a straw man candidate on the ballot to create the semblance of democracy but had to take him off fearing he’d get too many votes. Putin is so “popular” with the Russian people he didn’t dare run against even a straw man candidate. This is who Tommy Tuberville called at the “top of his game” and whom Trump seeks to emulate. He "won" of course. However, since there was no contest, "won" is probably the wrong word.

Unless you want a country in which members of the opposition of a strong man president die in prison from mysterious causes and people are spirited off the streets to who knows where you must vigorously oppose Trump’s efforts to replace the Great American Experiment in Constitutional Democracy with a Fascist Autocracy.

Where are the giants of this era is the question. Who is going to save the world from the likes of Putin and Xi? Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine, having refused safe passage from Ukraine and rallied his nation to fight off the invading Russian forces, is one. Another may be Alexei Navalny’s wife Yulia Navalnaya. This courageous woman has stepped into the breach and is taking the leadership role of his movement. But from outside Russia. The third was President of the United States, Joe Biden, who, despite his age — or maybe because of it — infused new life into NATO, revived a flagging U.S. economy, maintained a rational presence in the Middle East, and kept Xi Jinping from absorbing Taiwan into the PRC. He may even go down in history as a great American president. But, hopefully, not the last to be democratically elected.

But Biden stepped away from the nomination for a second term and for whatever reason, his chosen successor, Kamala Harris, was not elected. Donald John was. This blog is my way of fighting back against impending tyranny. I urge you to find the way that works for you and to join the fray.

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work. But neither are you free to abandon it.”

The Talmud

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Leland J. (Lee) Katz is a 3 year veteran of the USAF officer corps having served as a nuclear weapons alert duty officer as part of the NATO nuclear strike force at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and as officer in charge of the Athens (Greece) station of the Armed Forces Courier Service. He is a 38 year veteran of corporate America. His book, The Pretenders, is an autobiographical novel focused on his career in high tech. He holds a BA from the University of Massachusetts, a MS from Boston U., and a MBA from Boston College. He writes regularly on “My Views on the News” and other topics of interest in his blog on Substack.