The Man Who Never Planned to Leave

The Normalization of the Unthinkable

A criminal who incited a violent insurrection is openly running again, bragging about “winning in 2028,” and reportedly building a $300 million ballroom on White House grounds — an act of permanence, not service. These are not the gestures of a man preparing to hand over power. They are the signals of a man who sees the presidency not as a term, but as a throne.

The shocking part is not his audacity. It’s how normalized this has become. We once believed that an attempted coup would forever disqualify a person from public life. Yet, the same man is again the front-runner for one of the most powerful offices on earth — cheered by crowds, platformed by networks, and excused by a political party that long ago traded its conscience for his shadow.

The Architecture of Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism doesn’t always arrive wearing a uniform. It often walks in through the front door, smiling, while architects and donors sketch ballrooms and wings. A $300 million expansion to the White House isn’t just an act of vanity — it’s a symbol of permanence. Dictators throughout history have done the same: build monuments, gild the halls, surround themselves with loyalists, and rewrite the story of their rule as destiny.

Trump’s refusal to concede in 2020 was never a one-time tantrum. It was a test — a rehearsal. The institutions that bent to his will once are now even weaker, more partisan, more compromised. The question is not if he would stay past his term; it’s who would stop him if he tried again.

The Death of Consequence

When laws are ignored long enough, they stop functioning as laws. They become mere suggestions, contingent on who is in power and who is willing to enforce them. Trump’s legal troubles — from fraud to election interference to insurrection — should have been disqualifying. Instead, each indictment has been spun into martyrdom.

This inversion of accountability is how democracies decay. When the system begins to fear the criminal more than the crime, power consolidates in the hands of the most ruthless. We’ve seen this movie before — in Hungary, in Russia, in countless republics that once thought themselves unbreakable.

A Country Sleepwalking Toward Autocracy

The danger is not only Trump’s ambition. It’s our numbness to it. Each norm shattered, each outrage absorbed, moves the line of “acceptable” one inch further. We’ve grown accustomed to the chaos, the lies, the cruelty, the lawlessness — as if this is simply what politics is now. But this is how freedom dies: not with a single dramatic overthrow, but with a long sigh of resignation.

Trump doesn’t need to seize power violently again. He only needs to win once more and never let go. And if that happens, we will look back on these warnings and realize that the truth was clear all along — but we were too busy normalizing the nightmare to stop it.

AI Generated Image