That Devil Donald

No rational person thinks that they are master of their own destiny without the distortion of shrinking their perspective in time and space. No one is all-powerful and immortal. Someone can have mastery within a defined sphere over a limited period of time. In a democratic society individual self-mastery is assumed, in equality before the law, voting rights and other precepts. The autonomy of the state is an extension of individual autonomy, reflecting the will of the aggregate majority. 

Our state should, if it's functioning properly, be an example of the "wisdom of crowds."

Social dominance, whether voluntary or not, is undemocratic. It matters and it doesn't that petty tyrants have their henchmen and brownshirts, willing subservients, and that these underlings forcefully subjugate other people, because the result is the same and it's unclear where choice and dominance and submission begin and end. A brownshirt may be "compelled" to abdicate their freedom by odd, internal workings and a libertarian may be similarly a conformist and less than free. 

Mastery can occur naturally, through voluntary, conventional and circumstantial or circumscribed submission, or be a matter of aggression and dominance. My reading of our tradition is that a person willingly submits to an impersonal mastery, to God and other recognized structures of accepted wisdom and appropriateness, and thereby gains personal mastery, freedom, within limits. Those who opt for interpersonal dominance and submission lose personal mastery and independence.

They lose it on both ends of the equation. There are many archetypes and examples of this but the obvious one is the devil, whose pride and lust for power result in enslavement and compulsion and who exacts the same from his adherents. Enter Donald Trump, whose pride and lust for power enslave him and result in the same for his followers, a loss of individuality and autonomy to a sick will, a failure and retreat on both sides. Their movement is a good example of the banality of evil.

People expect that souls are bought and sold in situations of high drama but, no. It can happen easily and incrementally and imperceptibly both individually and in societies as a whole. It is happening with Donald Trump in as banal a mess as can be imagined. On multiple fronts the unthinkable is becoming defensible, acceptable, commonplace and even trite, and all of it in a country priding itself on its religious principles, exceptionalism and moral superiority.