America is struggling to describe what it is living through in President Donald Trump’s second term. The language we keep reaching for — “authoritarian,” “strongman,” “dictator” — doesn’t quite fit. Those words imply a rupture…a dramatic overthrow of democracy.
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What we are witnessing instead appears more incremental, more procedural, and therefore more difficult to confront. As Amnesty International recently warned, democratic erosion in the United States is occurring not through open collapse, but through the steady narrowing of civic space, the weakening of checks and balances, and the normalization of exceptional executive power.
Recently, in conversation with a close friend about the state of America and the presidency, we found ourselves less angry than tired. Not outraged, just disoriented. We weren’t debating policy or rehearsing arguments; we were sitting with a shared unease. What do we even call this that will awaken all of us? he asked. And in that moment, I realized how much of our political crisis is also a crisis of language.
We still vote. Courts still sit. Congress still meets. The Constitution still exists. And yet, many citizens—whether they support Trump or oppose him—sense that something fundamental has shifted. Power no longer seems to live primarily in institutions. It seems to live in a person, or at least in the idea of one. Political scientists have begun to name this transformation directly. A recent study in Political Science Quarterly argues that Trump’s return to office has accelerated the personalization of authority and weakened the informal democratic norms that once restrained executive power.
There is an older word for this kind of moment: Dominus. Even before arriving at that term, scholars have noted how difficult it is to classify Trumpism using familiar categories. A recent analysis from Harvard’s Ash Center observes that Trump’s governing style operates within democratic forms while steadily hollowing out their substance—making labels like “authoritarian” feel simultaneously true and insufficient.
Dominus is Latin for “master” or “lord.” In Roman political thought, it described a form of authority where one figure effectively owned the system in practice, even though the system still existed in form. The laws remained. The offices remained. But real power flowed through personal authority rather than shared rules.
This is not dictatorship in the classic sense. A Dominus does not abolish democracy; they inhabit it. They do not destroy institutions; they reorient them around themselves. Elections become affirmations. Courts become arenas of loyalty. Law becomes something that works—until it doesn’t.
As a public theologian I am less interested in diagnosing personalities than in naming structures of power. The prophetic tradition—from Amos to James Baldwin—teaches us that injustice is rarely sustained by villains alone. It is sustained by systems that quietly reorganize moral responsibility while appearing normal.
For Trump supporters, the Dominus captures something real and positive: a leader who cuts through paralysis, challenges elites while speaking to everyday frustrations, and takes responsibility when institutions feel distant or broken. In a nation marked by economic precarity, racial anxiety, and cultural displacement, that kind of decisiveness can feel like restoration.
For Trump critics, the Dominus captures the danger: a leader who personalizes power, weakens independent constraints, treats public office as a private platform, and replaces shared democratic authority with personal discretion. That logic is now visible both abroad and at home.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration launched a unilateral U.S. military operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his transfer to U.S. custody. Supporters hailed the move as decisive leadership; critics warned it set a dangerous precedent for executive war-making power and international law. Global reaction was swift and divided. As Al Jazeera reported, allies and adversaries alike questioned whether unilateral military action, justified largely through executive discretion, further erodes the rules-based international order.
Domestically, similar concerns surround Trump’s expansive use of the pardon power. In recent months, Trump has issued clemency to political allies, donors, and loyalists—moves that legal scholars argue blur the line between justice and personal loyalty. PBS NewsHour notes that these pardons increasingly resemble instruments of political protection rather than mercy.
That same asymmetry now animates public concern around the ongoing release of the Epstein files. In early 2026, the Justice Department published more than 3.5 million pages of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, while lawmakers were granted access to unredacted materials—yet significant questions remain about who is fully exposed and who remains shielded. As TIME has reported, the controversy is no longer simply about secrecy, but about credibility: in a healthy democracy, accountability is systematic; in a Dominus moment, it becomes selective, shaped less by principle than by proximity to power.
That moral logic is also visible in the return of racial dehumanization to the center of public life. When imagery likening the Obamas to apes resurfaces—and is circulated, excused, or met with strategic silence by figures aligned with the current political moment—it is not simply racist provocation. It is political signaling. The ape trope is one of the oldest tools used to deny Black people full humanity and therefore full citizenship. Its reappearance marks a shift in what is permitted, protected, and politically useful. As The Guardian reported, the outrage surrounding this imagery was less about shock than recognition: racial cruelty becomes normalized when power is organized around loyalty rather than moral restraint.
In moments like these, the question is not whether leaders personally endorse such language, but whether they allow it to stand. Under a Dominus, silence is not neutrality—it is permission.
Political theorist Sheldon Wolin warned that democracy can erode not only through repression, but through normalization—what he called “inverted totalitarianism,” where democratic forms persist while power becomes increasingly private and unaccountable.
The Dominus emerges when democracies become exhausted: when inequality widens, racial wounds remain unhealed, trust collapses, and citizens want certainty more than procedure. In such moments, societies do not abandon democracy outright. They reassign it—from systems to personalities.
This is why our crisis is so difficult to name. It is not collapse; it is reconfiguration.
The deeper risk is not Trump as an individual, but what he reveals about the age. Once citizens grow accustomed to power flowing through a single figure, it becomes harder to imagine it flowing anywhere else.
That is the real meaning of the Dominus: not a man, but a political species.
The question America faces is not simply whether it supports or opposes Donald Trump. The question is whether it wants to live in a system where power is ultimately owned by individuals or shared by institutions.
That is not a partisan question. It is a civilizational one.
The Christian tradition offers a final word of hope. When John wrote the Book of Revelation, he was writing under the shadow of Rome—of Caesar—the ultimate Dominus of its age. Rome appeared eternal. But John imagined it being outgrown, replaced by a “new heaven and a new earth” where power no longer flows downward from domination, but outward through justice, dignity, and mutual belonging.
In prophetic language, Babylon does not fall because it is attacked. It falls because it is no longer believed in.
The answer to the Age of the Dominus is not simply resistance to one leader, but the slow, faithful work of making institutions worthy of trust again—economically fairer, racially more honest, politically more accountable, morally more credible.
The future will not be saved by a stronger Dominus.
It will be saved by a stronger public.
Keith Magee is a London-based American a public theologian, author, and social justice scholar specializing in the intersection of race, religion, and politics. He serves as Chair and Professor of Practice in Social Justice at Newcastle Law School and a Senior Fellow and Professor at UCL Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose. He is the author of “Prophetic: Justice: Race, Religion and Politics.“
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