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https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6f9b904666fed6e750c0931a8c357a0aa9689be6/0_3_7514_4512/master/7514.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=44ad1aa4cb3925c405abd5ad2c1246e5The US constitution protects incompetence. But don’t underestimate the self-destructive power of the president’s own hubris
Tyrants come to a sticky end, or so history suggests. Richard III and Coriolanus made bloody exits. More recently, Saddam Hussein went to the gallows, Slobodan Milosevic went to jail, Bashar al-Assad went into exile. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was run to ground in a sewer. Tyranny, from the Greek túrannos (“absolute ruler”), is typically fuelled by hubris and leads ineluctably to nemesis. Tyrants are for toppling. Their downfall is a saving grace.
Tyranny, in its many forms, is back in vogue, and everyone knows who’s to blame. To be fair, to suggest similarities between the aforementioned abominable individuals and Donald Trump would be utterly wrong. In key respects, he’s worse. Measured by willingness and capacity to harm the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, wreak global economic mayhem and threaten nuclear annihilation, Trump is uniquely dangerous – and ever more so by the day.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
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