Anyone who reads the news is used to hearing that U.S. President Donald Trump’s behavior is unprecedented, after nearly four years of scandals and chaos. Less remarked on is that his cult of personality actually has historical precedent. Ironically, that’s even more reason to worry.
Americans like to think of themselves as the world’s most freedom-loving people, but they’ve fantasized about deliverance through a godlike leader—an “I alone can fix it” figure, as Trump boasted—at least once before. Before Trump, the United States’ closest brush with despotism came in 1783, just after the country won independence from Britain. The conventional wisdom at the time was that General George Washington, the hero of the Revolutionary War, was so popular that he could overthrow the weak national government if he wished to do so.
