Plato’s Warning

Plato warned us about Donald Trump. To counter the claim that might makes right, Plato’s Republic develops an elaborate case about the nature of justice. It concludes that justice is always intrinsically good, and the highest pursuit of justice leads to the greatest happiness. In making this argument, the Republic contrasts the most just person and polity with the most unjust. Controversially, Plato portrays the most just person as a philosopher; the most just city-state would be one ruled by philosopher kings. The most unjust person, by contrast, would be a tyrant, and tyranny would be the most unjust and misery-ridden form of government. Moreover, tyranny arises when democracy goes to seed. That’s Plato’s warning.

Of course, Plato is no fan of democracy, at least not in his Republic. He thinks democracy’s emphasis on equality and individual freedom undermines the pursuit of justice. Further, when this emphasis becomes excessive, democracy destroys itself, giving rise to rule by a tyrant, the absolutely worst form of government. 

As described by Plato, the tyrannical man (and it’s definitely a man) is insatiably power-hungry and always out of control. His “waking life” is a “nightmare” (Republic #576b); no society can be “more wretched than one ruled by a tyrant” (#576e). In fact, the tyrant “is really a slave, compelled to engage in the worst sort of fawning … and pandering to the worst kind of people.” He is “inevitably envious, untrustworthy, unjust, friendless, impious, … and nurse to every kind of vice.” So he is “extremely unfortunate,” as is everyone who supports him (#579d-580a).

The Pathological Narcissist

Thus has Plato diagnosed the tyrannical person as a pathological narcissist, a couple of millennia before personality disorders became clinically certifiable. The pathological narcissist cannot stand to be criticized; he can never get enough attention and applause; and he feels no empathy toward others. Adolf Hitler was a pathological narcissist. According to both his niece and a leading researcher into narcissistic disorders, so is Donald Trump.

As Plato recognized, once a pathological narcissist acquires political power, there’s no limit to the damage he can do. For none of the normal guardrails of a democratic order—neither laws nor customs, neither courts nor the constitution—will stand in his way. He sees all of these as tools to be manipulated to his own advantage, and not as substantial agreements, however flawed, that we citizens have reached about how to achieve justice and freedom.

Consequently, even if Donald Trump is convicted of the egregious crimes for which he has been indicted, whether for mishandling classified government documents or for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, he and his followers will deny any legally established guilt, just as they already have. Nor will they stop at anything to void these convictions. Former President Trump has already called for the termination of the United States Constitution in order to reinstate himself in power. It’s no secret that, if he is reelected in 2024, he will both pardon himself and try to destroy his prosecutors. The only way to stop him is by defeating him at the polls and backing this up with hyperaware citizen observation and ever-vigilant law enforcement.

Democracy versus Populism

Still, it’s a mystery why so many ordinary Americans support Donald Trump, just as it remains baffling why so many good German citizens fell prey to Hitler and his henchmen in the 1930s. Countless books and blogs have tried to explain why. I’m not sure I have much to add. Yet it does strike me that too many of us confuse democracy with populism, and too few care about genuine democracy, topics touched on in my previous blog about UICA. As a result, we’ve become vulnerable to the appeal of authoritarian populists like Donald Trump.

Democracy and populism are easy to confuse. As the recent examples of Hungary and India show, it’s not hard for a country to move from one to the other. The key difference is this. Whereas citizens in a political democracy should be committed to the democratic rule of law, populists are committed instead to the law of popular rule. For small “d” democrats, laws are substantial agreements we reach through careful deliberation involving everyone potentially affected by them, and they are to be enforced or revised in the same deliberative fashion. In principle, everyone subject to these laws has equal standing before them.

For populists, by contrast, laws simply express what “the people” want, and usually the people include only some of a country’s citizenry. “The people” (das Volk) excluded Jews in Hitler’s Germany, for example, and would exclude people of color and the LGBTQ+ community in white nationalist America today. For the populist, it doesn’t matter whether laws and court decisions trample the rights of minorities or violate higher standards of justice, so long as they are what “the people” want. Hence it is not hard for would-be tyrants to use populist slogans to undermine the democratic rule of law and impose their own will in the name of the people. “Make America Great Again!” is just such a slogan.

Resisting the Siren

The Republic does not distinguish between populism and democracy. If it had, perhaps Plato would have ranked democracy higher on the scales of good governance, as being more likely to promote justice in society and less likely to devolve into tyranny.

Yet Plato’s warning still stands. The siren call of authoritarian populism lures many Americans today, even as it threatens other constitutional democracies. To resist it requires diligent efforts from every democratic citizen. Otherwise, we face the chaotic rule of a tyrannical narcissist. And that would be a waking nightmare.