JFK said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” That line came to mind when viewing this AI video which just broke on Twitter a short while ago. Its title is MAGA Ballroom 2028 and the vibe is positively French revolution. This is “let ’em eat cake” time. It’s also set in a fictional era (so far) where Donald Trump is still in power in 2028 and life is not exactly happy, joyous and free. Just the opposite judging from the faces of the ordinary Americans depicted herein.
Holy shit pic.twitter.com/sSTq2RqDKs
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) August 8, 2025
I think you should disclose that you used AI to write this comment.
— Nathan (@nathan_eatssoup) August 9, 2025
Be that as it may, the comment does catch the “storm the Bastille” vibe. The video makes an oligarchic society clear. There are only the elites in their palaces of privilege and the downtrodden, straight out of Les Miserables.
From The Guardian, April 27, 2025, written by Simon Tisdell.
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.
In any notional league of tyranny, Trump tops the table, with Russia’s Vladimir Putin following closely in his rear. If these two narcissists formed a partnership (a scary but not wholly improbable thought), it could be called Monsters R US. Across a disordered globe, wannabe “strongmen” queue to join their club.
Yet like every tyrant, old and new, Trump must fall. How may nemesis be peacefully and swiftly attained? As he marks 100 days back in power next week, such questions gain urgency. Can the 47th president’s premeditated swinging of a wrecking ball at US democracy, laws, values and dreams be halted? How may what remains of the international rules-based system be salvaged? Who or what will dethrone him?
Policy failures and personal misconduct do not usually collapse a presidency. The US constitution is inflexible: incompetence is protected; cupidity has a fixed term. Trump is in power until 2029 unless impeached – third time lucky? – for “high crimes and misdemeanors”, or else deemed unfit under section 4 of the 25th amendment. With JD Vance, his yes-man Veep, playing Oval Office bouncer and Congress awash with Maga converts, such procedural defenestration appears unlikely.
Public backing is certainly slipping. Last week’s nationwide demonstrations, worries about inflation and savings, and anger over federal funding cuts, cultural war-making and mass firings reflect deepening alarm about threats to an entire way of life. Polls show Trump losing the middle-of-the-roaders whose votes ended the Biden interregnum. Yet despite a royal resemblance to another “tyrant”, King George III, a second American revolution is a long way off.
I don’t know if I share the author’s certainty. What I know for a fact is that we’re on terra incognita. The American experiment has never faced the particular set of challenges it is facing right now. I also believe that Trump will do himself in, but I marvel at how long it’s taking for that to happen and all the damage that he is wreaking along the way, both domestically and globally.
Nobody knows what the bridge too far will be for America. Maybe the Epstein files are it. Certainly the Epstein files have produced more blowback to Trump than anything that we have seen.
Or, more likely, it won’t be any one thing. It will be a compilation of things. But one aspect of politics can always be depended upon, if we remain any kind of a democracy at all: and that is that the political pendulum always swings back. We get ourselves into a mess and then people are voted out, regimes change, and the political weathervane realigns itself as the winds of change blow. This we have seen time and again.
Always bear in mind, Trump is barely in office. He won by 1.5%. He has no “mandate” except in his addled mind. The electorate is extremely divided and the man is hated by half of America. That is not the formula for an easily done tyrannical takeover. In six months his misadministration has already had its scandals and its firings. That is only going to increase.
Trump is winging it, like always, except he’s older, frailer, and the road ahead of him is very short. That’s the good news. But we do well to be on guard and watch things closely, being ready for anything. Vigilance is the price of liberty.
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The ballroom scene reminds me of the gold room in The Shining, when Jack starts drinking again, the devil serving the drinks for free, and the well dressed damned living it up. In their private hell of course.
The Guardian, of all media, should know that Richard III was no tyrant. That repuration is from Henry VII’s disinformation campaign.(which even fooled Thomas More.) And that if Marie Antoinette said anything, it was not cake but brioche. Thre are plenty of real tyrants in history to cite – the 20th century alone has quite a collection. To anyone looking to demonstrate a tyrant not dying in comfort, I suggest Mussolini.