(Dobbs) "We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

This isn’t a fictional 1984 anymore. It is a chillingly real 2025.

In my work I traveled the world. In free nations, with leaders elected by free populations, I never saw banners or billboards featuring the images of Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher or Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl or any of their peers. They saw themselves as servants, not sovereigns. But in autocratic countries, in dictatorships, it was a whole different picture.

We’ve seen it through history.

This is what despots do. It is right out of George Orwell’s 1984. They don’t glorify the nation, they glorify themselves. And now, we have our own.

Festooning the front of the Washington headquarters of at least three government agencies— Labor, Agriculture, and Health & Human Services— you can ogle in adoration at the angry visage of one Donald J. Trump.

The cost of these propaganda pictures isn’t the issue— that’s just a tiny drop in a huge bucket. The issue is the symbolism. Trump’s face doesn’t glorify our nation, it glorifies him. It’s another small sign that this president is doing precisely what dictators do. Precisely what I’ve seen in countries where dictators dominate their nations.

But it doesn’t stop there. Over the weekend the government unveiled its newest canonization of the president: a credit card which, according to the “fact sheet” from the White House, “facilitate(s) expedited immigration for aliens who make significant financial gifts to the United States.”

And guess whose face adorns the front of the garish gold card?

Would you see this in the U.K.? Would you see it in Germany? Or in France, or Japan, or Mexico, or South Korea? Nations where they have normal leaders. Would you have seen it in the United States of America before this man became president?

There is a consistent line taking shape here. Donald Trump is trashing every norm, all in the interest of embellishing his prestige and consolidating his power.

His latest move in that direction came in a series of posts Saturday night on his website, one of them aimed directly at his attorney general Pam Bondi: “Pam, I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia (James, the attorney general of New York)??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done’.”

“Guilty as hell” of what? There’s only one answer: Guilty as hell of challenging Donald Trump. “They impeached me twice,” he wrote at the end, “and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.”

Behold the language of a dictator.

This rant was, as The Washington Post put it, “a breakdown of traditional fire walls that have existed between the White House and Justice Department on prosecutorial discretion.” But fire walls mean nothing to this defiant president. Norms mean nothing. Decency means nothing. The Constitution means nothing. Freedom means nothing. Democracy means nothing.

Power means everything. Ego means everything. Money means everything. Domination means everything.

And, revenge means everything. At yesterday’s quasi-state funeral for Charlie Kirk— a private citizen murdered by a lone gunman— Kirk’s widow Erika had the grace to say to the crowd in Arizona that she forgives her husband’s killer, telling the audience, “The answer to hate is not hate.” But to Donald Trump, grace is a foreign word. Minutes after she left the stage, he told the same crowd, “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them. Sorry Erika.”

He just couldn’t stop himself. He’s the president of the United States and he just couldn’t stop himself.

That, in a nutshell, is Donald Trump. Hate is all he knows. And at every turn, he vows retribution and reprisal for the people he hates. He blames Kirk’s death on “the radical left.” They are “vicious” he said this week, “and they’re horrible.” He has vowed to go after the left for Charlie Kirk’s murder. As if it was more than one lone fanatic who shot Kirk.

This isn’t a fictional 1984 anymore. It is a chillingly real 2025. Columnist David Brooks presciently wrote six months ago, “It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. This is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

In those autocratic countries where I’ve worked, citizens cannot lose their chains. We can. Peacefully, lawfully, but mightily enough to turn the course of history. Or else history will record that we let an autocrat and wannabe dictator steal our freedoms away without a fight.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net