Trump the ‘Dictator on Day 1’
Only on Day 1?
My mother, who died at age 86 more than 20 years ago, was not familiar with the word “oligarch.” For her, the “rich” were two men who had lived in her tiny Indiana hometown who had enough money to send the most promising students to college and whose wives took soup to the sick.
Because of her background, when my mother would discuss optimum forms of government, she would invariably bring up something that Plato called a “benevolent dictatorship.” In her mind, there would be a man at the top — “a gentleman and a scholar” — who would make good decisions about our country and keep us all prosperous and safe.
This reliance upon a benevolent dictator who resided in her head was not due to any distrust of ordinary people—my mother thought of herself as an ordinary person. Rather, it was because she was convinced that public education wasn’t properly preparing her or anybody else’s children to be self-governing, so we would have to rely on somebody to govern us. It would be what I would call an oligarch, but a good man.
She was right about education. My high-school history lessons that amounted to no more than Christopher Columbus — discovered America — 1492 and Vasco de Gama — discovered India — 1498 did not prepare me to understand history or politics. Neither did diagramming sentences in English…
