H. L. Mencken
Kurt Godel (1906 – 1978) was an Austrian, and later an American logician, mathematician, and philosopher. He is considered one of the most significant logicians in history. In 1931 he published his two Incompleteness Theorems (perhaps the most important mathematical works of all times) at the age of 25 and only one year after completing his doctorate at the University of Vienna.
In 1940 Godel (who was Jewish) fled his native Germany to escape the Nazi regime and joined many other brilliant minds, including Einstein and John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In 1947 he decided to apply for US citizenship and in preparation for his citizenship exam and interview, he applied his prodigious mind to reading and studying the US Constitution. One day he announced to Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern (of game theory fame) that he had discovered an inconsistency in the Constitution that could allow the United States to become a dictatorship. They begged him not to mention it to the examiner and accompanied him to his hearing before Judge Phillip Forman, hoping they could keep him quiet about the inconsistency he had discovered. All went smoothly until Judge Forman mentioned that a dictatorship like the Nazi regime could never happen in the United States. Godel interrupted him, saying “On the contrary, I know how that can happen.” Luckily, Judge Forman knew Einstein (he had administered his citizenship oath earlier) and cut him off and moved on to routine questions.
Godel’s flaw is easy to see, a dictatorship could easily happen if one party took control of the Presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives with a sufficient majority in both houses of congress to ensure passage of any proposed law, plus appointments to the federal courts including the Supreme Court. Given the age of the current Supreme Court Justices, it would not take long before the court would be in their hands and assured of ruling in their favor on any challenges to their agenda.
All the pieces necessary for a US fascist-style dictatorship are currently in place: (1) Trump, a media-savvy, wealthy, charismatic, and populist demagogue in the mold of Huey Long, (2) an ignorant, uneducated, and frightened electorate combined with a history of a low turnout in primary elections, and (3) an extremely weak field of other Republican contenders who lack any ability to garner the attention of the media away from the King of reality television.
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