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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship.

She obviously never imagined the state of American politics today. A good chunk of them now openly want a "strongman" in the high office. The degree to which they want to be bullied by those they elect boarders on socio-political masochism.

So I disagree with Thompson. To say that people don't see the dictator coming is too easy. The people must be held to account for the leaders they create, else the cycle repeat.

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Totally agree. The current congress welcomes Obama's use of (likely illegal) executive orders to accomplish things, because it means they can avoid responsibility and accountability. They don't fight to retain their constitutionally granted powers, because all they really want it somebody else to do the dirty work -- end result is they allow unprecedented levels of executive control to go basically unchecked ... and whether or not you agree with what's being done with it now, it's a slippery slope, because each president is different, but they'll all have this precedent to point back to as justification.

And, there is a cap on the maximum number of voters who could possibly give a damn at any given moment. Most of the people who would raise concerns about these executive orders will not be too concerned about overreach by the executive once the next Republican President is in office, nor is it likely they spoke up when the last one was in. And so it goes.

That's the true danger in divisive politics - when seeing that 'your team' scores points while they can becomes more important than good policy and governance.

I know it's fashionable to have a defeatist view of current american politics, but I honestly don't see how the current political climate in the United States is any more dysfunctional than the American political machinations of the early 1900's that led to the election of Teddy Roosevelt, a notorious "strongman" in high office, who after being "disappointed" by his chosen successor, and then friend, Taft decided to run for a third-term in high office. And to suggest Dorothy Thompson would be ignorant of, then recent, political history seems misguided.

My personal touchstone for American political dysfunction is the election of 1860. No matter how this election ends, I don't think the result is likely to be a civil war.

To be a little less speculatively brazen, consider Putin, who got elected (well, if he didn't totally cheat) on a campaign of resorting the Soviet dictatorship.

Elected? Technically I suppose so, but he was groomed as Yeltsin's successor.

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