When JD Vance (and others) dream of tyranny, they expect to be holding the whip.

Sen. JD Vance is an enthusiastic Trump toady who thinks if Trump wins he should fire everyone in government who isn’t loyal to him, a standard lots of conservatives embrace. When one reporter asked Vance if he wasn’t calling for dictatorship, he didn’t deny it, just whined how unfair the question was. It’s unsurprising that like many conservatives, Vance thinks Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban’s tyranny has a lot to recommend it.

Republican officials are ducking and weaving when asked if they’ll support a Biden win in November. Which I translate as “if we can get away with a successful coup, we’ll support it but we’re not sure it’ll work.”

Meanwhile, Joel Webbon, conservative pastor is one of the right-wing Christians demanding a theocratic takeover: “Men must be governed. Now, ideally, men would govern themselves … but when you don’t have a populace that is capable of self-governance—when the fruit of the Spirit that is self-control has left the building for decades and nobody seems to have it—then men must be governed. And if they will not govern themselves, then someone else needs to govern them.”

What’s implicit in all these arguments (and those of other tyranny-supporters such as Curtis Yarvin) is that Vance and Webbon will be wielding the whip and laying down the law or least loyal acolytes to whatever modern day Fuhrer gets the power. They don’t believe in dictatorship per se; to paraphrase Matt Bai, they want dictatorship as long as it’s their side that lays down the rules or in their interest in the case of Webbon, his church or view of God that spells out the law. If Trump won and Kamala Harris refused to certify the election — something plenty of Republicans argued in 2020 was within Mike Pence’s power — Vance would spend the rest of his career whining about it. If the fascists got their dream dictatorship and wound up on the wrong side of their master (“You got your kid a measles shot. Don’t you know the Supreme Leader just declared vaccines the instruments of Satan?”) they’d be horrified the leopards ate their face. I doubt they’d ever feel bad about letting the leopards eat other people’s faces.

For the religious right, as I’ve mentioned before, there’s also a horror at the thought of people having the freedom to choose for themselves. Webbon’s convinced people are scum who must be kept in line by enlightened rulers like himself; otherwise they won’t live in what he considers a Christian way. Particularly women it seems: Webbon’s freely admitted he doesn’t allow his wife to read books without his permission. And dictates things like what time his four children go to the bathroom, “when we eat, what we eat, what we wear.”

And quite simply he, like Vance, likes the idea of whipping the lower orders into shape. Imposing order and discipline. Why waste time trying to evangelize or reason with people? Why set a Christian example by your loving behavior.

Which puts me in mind of a quote by Isaiah Berlin: “Men may be divided into those who are in favour of life and those who are against it. Among those who are against it there are sensitive and wise and penetrating people who are too offended and discouraged by the shapelessness of spontaneity, by the lack of order among human beings who wish to live their own lives, not in obedience to any common pattern”

I don’t think Vance or Webbon are at all sensitive, wise or penetrating. Otherwise, Berlin’s spot on.