AMERICA’S OLD CRAZY KING, AMERICA’S NEW CRAZY KING
250 YEARS LATER, THE CROWN COMES WITH WI-FI
Happy Birthday, America.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of irritated colonists looked across the Atlantic at King George III and said, in the most historically consequential version of “unsubscribe” ever written: No thank you.
They had endured taxation without representation, royal decrees from afar, and the unsettling experience of being governed by a man who believed the colonies existed mostly to pay bills, obey orders, and stop whining. So they declared independence, built a republic, and designed a system specifically intended to prevent one loud, insulated man from ruling the country like his personal estate.
And yet, here we are — nearly a quarter-millennium later — watching America flirt once again with kingly behavior, only this time the crown is invisible, the palace has gold curtains, and the royal proclamations arrive in all caps.
Welcome to the great American full circle: from King George to King Donald.
Different century. Different accent. Same alarming question:
What happens when a powerful man becomes deaf to the people and loudly convinced that reality is merely a hostile opinion?
I. King George: The Original Remote-Control Monarch
King George III ruled from across the ocean, which was convenient for him and deeply inconvenient for everyone else. The colonists complained. They petitioned. They protested. They tossed tea into Boston Harbor with the theatrical flair of people who knew history was watching.
George, however, seemed to hear the complaints of the American people the way a cat hears its name: briefly, selectively, and with no intention of changing behavior.
To the colonists, the king represented a government that had become:
- Detached from ordinary people
- Hostile to dissent
- Obsessed with loyalty
- Convinced that power was its birthright
- Unable to distinguish criticism from treason
Sound familiar? History does not repeat itself exactly, but it does occasionally put on a fake mustache and run the same play again.
George had Parliament, royal governors, and imperial troops. Donald Trump has cable news surrogates, loyalist lawmakers, and a talent for turning every courtroom, election, and weather map into a personal loyalty test.
King George ruled by decree.
King Donald prefers executive orders, grievance speeches, and the occasional declaration that whatever he just said was perfect, even when witnesses, transcripts, and the laws of physics object.
II. The Madness Question: One King Had Doctors, the Other Has Commentators
Now, to be fair, history has given King George III the full “medical mystery” treatment. Scholars have debated whether his later illnesses were caused by bipolar disorder, porphyria, dementia, arsenic-laced treatments, or the general horror show that was 18th-century medicine.
George’s doctors strapped him to chairs, blistered his skin, and tried to cure him with treatments that sound less like medicine and more like something invented by a haunted blacksmith.
Modern America is more sophisticated. Today, when a leader appears untethered from reality, we do not apply blistering powders.
We assemble panels on television.
Donald Trump’s mental state has been debated endlessly by psychologists, pundits, critics, relatives, authors, and people yelling into steering wheels during drive-time radio. Some point to his grandiosity, impulsiveness, grievance politics, and casual relationship with verifiable truth. Others insist it is strategy, branding, showmanship, or the political equivalent of professional wrestling with nuclear codes.
But there is an important line here: there is no official public medical diagnosis of Donald Trump confirming mental illness. The American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule warns professionals against diagnosing public figures from afar without examination and consent.
So, let us avoid pretending to be doctors.
We do not need a diagnosis to discuss behavior.
We do not need a medical chart to recognize authoritarian tendencies.
And we certainly do not need a stethoscope to hear a man say, in effect, “Only I can fix it,” and notice that this is not exactly the language of a humble public servant.
III. George Had a Crown. Donald Has a Brand.
The beauty of monarchy, if one can call it that, is its honesty. A king wears a crown. He lives in a palace. He does not pretend you hired him to serve customer support.
Modern authoritarian politics is sneakier. It arrives wrapped in flags, slogans, grievance, and the claim that giving one man more power is somehow the purest expression of freedom.
King George believed authority flowed downward.
King Donald often speaks as though legitimacy flows inward — toward himself, his image, his victories, his injuries, his enemies, his ratings, his crowd sizes, his version of events.
One had royal subjects.
The other has supporters who are repeatedly asked not merely to vote, but to believe.
Believe the election was stolen.
Believe every investigation is a witch hunt.
Believe every critic is corrupt.
Believe every institution that says no — courts, journalists, prosecutors, election officials, former allies, former staffers — has magically joined one vast conspiracy.
At some point, politics stops being governance and starts becoming a medieval court drama, except instead of jesters we have podcast hosts.
IV. Deafness to the People: Then and Now
King George was deaf to colonial grievances in the political sense. Later in life, he also suffered serious physical decline, including deafness and blindness, which deepened his isolation.
Trump’s deafness is not medical. It is political.
He hears crowds, but not citizens.
He hears praise, but not accountability.
He hears loyalty, but not public service.
He hears “sir” in stories that often sound as though they were generated by a compliment machine trapped in an elevator.
The American Revolution was born from the idea that leaders must answer to the people. Not the other way around. The Declaration of Independence was not merely a breakup letter to Britain. It was a warning label attached to power:
When rulers become destructive of the people’s rights, the people have the authority to change the government.
That was the radical idea.
Not that leaders are perfect.
Not that voters always choose wisely.
Not that democracy is tidy, polite, or efficient.
But that no one is above removal.
No king. No president. No self-declared genius. No man whose ego requires its own branch of government.
V. The Founders’ Great Anti-King Machine
The Founding Fathers were many things: brilliant, flawed, visionary, hypocritical, courageous, and occasionally overdressed for summer in Philadelphia.
But they understood one thing clearly: power rots when it is not checked.
So they built a system with escape hatches:
- Elections
- Impeachment
- Courts
- Congress
- A free press
- Civil society
- Peaceful transfer of power
- The right to vote leaders out before they start measuring the Oval Office for a throne
The presidency was never supposed to be monarchy with term limits. It was supposed to be an office temporarily lent to a citizen by other citizens.
A president is not a king.
A president is not the nation.
A president is not entitled to obedience, worship, immunity, or a permanent starring role in the American nervous system.
The president works for us.
That sentence should not feel controversial. Yet here we are, needing to say it with fireworks in the background.
VI. America Comes Full Circle — But the Exit Door Still Works
There is something darkly comic about celebrating America’s 250th birthday while debating whether we have become nostalgic for monarchy.
After all that tea throwing, pamphlet writing, musket firing, constitution drafting, and anthem singing, the republic now finds itself staring at the old royal temptation in a new red tie.
History has a wicked sense of humor.
The colonists rejected a king who ruled from afar.
Today, Americans must reject the idea that any president can rule from above.
King George had hereditary power.
King Donald seeks personal power.
King George ignored the colonies.
King Donald often ignores the constitutional limits that make presidents presidents instead of monarchs with better transportation.
But here is the difference — and it is the whole miracle of the American experiment:
We can vote.
We do not need a revolution every time a leader forgets who he serves.
We do not need to dump tea into the harbor, though admittedly it remains one of history’s more cinematic acts of customer dissatisfaction.
We have ballots.
We have November.
We have the peaceful, ordinary, world-shaking power to say:
You’re fired.
VII. Happy Birthday, America — Now Act Like a Republic
So happy birthday, America.
You were born from rebellion against a king. You survived civil war, depression, corruption, demagogues, scandals, assassinations, and more than a few men who mistook public office for personal property.
You are messy, loud, bruised, beautiful, infuriating, and still astonishing.
But birthdays are not just for cake and fireworks. They are for remembering who you are.
America is not supposed to kneel before strongmen.
America is not supposed to confuse cruelty with strength.
America is not supposed to treat democracy like an heirloom we admire but never maintain.
The Founders did not give us a republic so we could spend 250 years wandering back toward the throne, muttering, “Maybe this king will be different.”
They gave us a vote.
Use it.
Because the cure for crazy kings is not royal therapy, palace gossip, or waiting for history to behave itself.
The cure is democracy.
And democracy only works when the people show up.
