Tyrants

Tyrants usually come to power in times of great stress in society, usually economic. Tyrants usually are democratically (or constitutionally) empowered. In classical Greece, in Rome, in Germany in the middle of the last century, in Haiti and Cuba in the Caribbean, and more recently in Venezuela, that has been their pattern.

Once in power they are not necessarily socialists, or fascists, or communists, or royalists - they could be and have been any of those - but they are nearly always populists, seizing on the fears of the masses.

What is universal to tyrants, however, is the message: (1) always attack the predicessor government as the reason for inherited problems, (2) find a "bogey man," real or imagined, some evil that against which the population can be rallyed - bankers will do, all the better if they're Jews; in more recent times, insurance companies, and (3) establish yourself as the good knight fighting that evil.

Elsewhere the United States itself is the bogey man. In Iran, the "great satan," in Venezuela (as in Cuba), the oppressor, readying an invasion that might come at any moment. They should not be our greatest concern, however.

The United States is not immune from tyrants.