Listening to the Roundtable a few days ago I heard Vera Eccarius-Kelly explain that dictatorship is much worse than people understand. She couldn’t be more right, but I don’t know how many got her point, so I want to repeat and reinforce it.
Dictatorship is about loyalty – not justice or decency. Loyalty to the guy above gets protection from people complaining below. Worse, complaining is an offense – more than the absence of the First Amendment, complaints are treated as sabotage, as disloyalty. So if something goes wrong, you have to keep quiet.
It’s not limited to so-called policy. Something’s wrong with the water, sewage, garbage collection, a pothole. Your child is being bullied at school or the police ignored violence to family or friends. KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT. Complain, and the so-called public official would likely have his hand out. You’d feel lucky if all he wanted was money, not your wife, son or daughter. Life under dictatorship can be hell – not figurative hell but hell on earth.
There are no rules in dictatorship. Officials don’t feel bound by rules – rules of decency, justice, rules of any kind – it’s all about what they can get away with. People working for dictators often live off graft, corruption and intimidation – their power over you is more than bad service in a restaurant. And beware, in a dictatorship, criminal organizations can always outbid you.
Republicans complain about the “deep state.” They’re complaining about rules. Bureaucracy is about carrying out rules. Rules in a democracy are based on legislation – not arbitrary orders and demands but what bureaucrats are supposed to do.
In a democracy, we can object and try to get rules changed, to complain that they are unfair, unjust, whatever. But big shots don’t like rules – who are you to expect a big shot to obey a rule? So they go after the “deep state.” But then everything is up for grabs.
Have you noticed where the refugees come from? We’ve been complaining for years about refugees from central America. The migrants are fleeing from dictatorships without working rules – the dictators and their minions function like the Mafia or other gangs who say to everyone around, “everything you have is ours.” They go after the children; they go after the women. They demand so-called “protection” money from the businesses and they strip out people’s assets until there’s nothing left but getting out – if that’s even possible.
That’s why they’re complaining at the border; that’s why they’re willing to do almost anything if we’d just let them in. They’d do almost anything just to live with rules – rules they can count on.
Dictatorship is not a walk in the park. It’s dangerous to go to school or the grocery store. It is NOT about the rights our Constitution guarantees to “justice … domestic tranquility … the general welfare … [or] the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Dictators are dangerous to their own people no matter how good they sound when they start.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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