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The End of an Empire? Is the USA a Dictatorship?

HAVANA TIMES – I never would have imagined it. Over the past few weeks, I’ve met with several foreign correspondents from Spain, France, and Mexico who came to the United States to write chronicles of the end of the empire. Somewhat surprised, I asked them how they saw the United States from the outside, and they unequivocally told me that it seems to be a country that is self-destructing.

Is the United States already a dictatorship?

That’s the question they’re asking. With Donald Trump’s second term as president, they believe that American democracy has been suffocating and that worrying signs of authoritarianism have emerged. And these are:

1) Trump is accumulating more and more power, from control of Congress, the military, and a majority on the Supreme Court to the obedience of business leaders, large corporations, and former political opponents.

2) Fear—and sometimes terror—has gripped the country. The laws and the courts can no longer be trusted. Trump seems to do whatever he pleases without any consequences.

3) A kind of secret police force has emerged, acting with total impunity, unidentified, masked, and armed with weapons of war. ICE immigration agents recently killed two US citizens—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—and are arresting hundreds of thousands of immigrants with no criminal record and separating parents from their children. No one is safe; a five-year-old boy—Liam “Conejo” Ramos—was detained by immigration authorities, and a two-month-old baby with pneumonia—Juan Nicolas—was deported to Mexico.

4) Attacks on the press, teachers, judges, and opposition politicians are increasing. And critics of the president—like journalist Don Lemon—or those who mock him—like comedians Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel—have been sued or suspended. Many Trump supporters have dedicated themselves to publishing lies and conspiracy theories, such as his claim that he won the 2020 election. And the president’s language is becoming increasingly crude, like calling the people of Somalia “trash,” or portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as apes on his social media accounts.

5) Externally, Trump—as commander-in-chief of the United States nuclear arsenal—intends to seize other countries (like Greenland), intervenes in others (like Venezuela), and threatens military operations in Mexico, Colombia, Panama, and Cuba. Alliances are over. His global tariff policy has earned the United States the enmity of the entire planet. The ogre is becoming increasingly isolated.

For the United States to become a dictatorship, the electoral system—which Trump now wants to nationalize—would have to collapse, and the military would have to turn against the population. That hasn’t happened. But democracies fall in many ways, and there isn’t a single sequence. That’s why what’s happening in the nation is so dangerous. Much has been written about this. I will choose just two quotes.

“We might be tempted to believe that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from threats,” wrote Timothy Snyder in his excellent and short book, *On Tyranny*. “But this is a misconception.” It is surprising that a country like the United States, which will celebrate 250 years of democracy this coming July 4th, is in danger of becoming an authoritarian regime. The reason is that the United States has many internal contradictions.

“The United States is a very heterogeneous nation that apparently has considerable sources of racial animosity,” said Karen Stenner in her book *The Authoritarian Dynamic*. Stenner suggests that the United States has not been able to manage “tolerance and respect for differences” in such a diverse, multiethnic, and multicultural nation. And that is why it is breaking down from within.

To my friends abroad, I say that I do see serious signs of authoritarianism here, but I don’t yet believe that the United States is a dictatorship. No one will throw me in jail for writing this column, and I see signs of resistance everywhere, from the citizen protests in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, which I witnessed, to Bad Bunny’s extraordinary and diverse Super Bowl halftime show. Every act of bravado by Trump is met with a response, and that keeps democracy alive.

When I decided to move to the United States in 1983, Mexico was not yet a democracy. And I remember arriving in Los Angeles and seeing how journalists questioned and criticized President Ronald Reagan, and nothing happened. “I want to live in this country,” I thought. And I stayed. But I am not willing, ever again, to live under an authoritarian regime like the one I experienced during my adolescence in Mexico.

The way to do this is not to remain silent. The journalist Maria Ressa, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said it better than anyone in her book How to Stand Up to a Dictator: “Never, never, never accept being intimidated by anyone, no matter who he is”.

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