In June 14th: Will the Dice Be Cast Today?, Manuel Hinds warns that the United States may be approaching an irreversible turning point akin to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “crack-up”—a collapse from within rather than from external blows. Through a dialogue between fictional characters, Hinds argues that The Prince (a stand-in for Donald Trump) is deliberately dismantling liberal democracy while covertly preparing to impose tyranny. He suggests that a critical moment is imminent—possibly June 14th—when The Prince may drop all pretense and openly seize authoritarian power. This “Rubicon moment” must come before the 2026 elections, as The Prince risks losing political power and legitimacy. With opposition rising due to his increasingly tyrannical and unpopular policies, Hinds contends that today may be his last viable opportunity to make the transition to full tyranny—or for democracy to push back decisively and survive.
BUILDING THE CRACK UP
“Hey, Jack,” said Nicco, “do you remember F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essay, “The Crack Up,” in which he warned against the sly threats that come from within? Let me read a relevant paragraph from it related to what we are experiencing now.”
Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work—the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come from the outside — the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within — that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick — the second kind happens almost without your knowing but is realized suddenly indeed. [1]
“We might be approaching a moment like this in our country's history. It will certainly arrive at or before November 2026. It could even be today. In fact, I believe June 14th will become a date that people will forever remember, whether for good, bad, or evil.”
“My God, Nicco! Why do you think that? Aren’t you becoming too dramatic? I have found in life that there is nothing irreversible, except death. If something wrong happens today, there will always be a way to reverse it.”
“You are wrong, Jack. The possibility of reversal does not exist in nature, much less in social processes. You cannot unscramble an egg. You cannot recover the pig from the bacon. In social processes subject to extreme stress, as we are living today, there comes a moment when the old order breaks, and that was the only order you had. It’s like death. Without order, you sink into chaos, the most terrifying word for a society. People prefer any tyranny to chaos. That is why aspirants to tyrants actively promote the onset of chaos while preparing the tools to impose a new tyrannical order on the population immediately.
“That is why The Prince has been working to dismantle the existing order, which is liberal democracy, rapidly, and he is succeeding in at least substantially weakening it. At the same time, he has been preparing the tyrannical structure that would inherit the people's obedience.
“He is doing what I said a long time ago,
...the populace is by nature fickle; it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to confirm them in that persuasion. Therefore one must urgently arrange matters so that when they no longer believe they can be made to believe by force.[2]
FROM THE RAZOR’S EDGE TO THE ASSAULT OF POWER
“Up to this moment, The Prince has been walking at the razor’s edge. He is working both sides of his power equation, attempting to prevent people from fully understanding what he is doing. I say fully understanding because he must inject the idea among certain segments of the population, those who are partial to him, that the current situation is no longer sustainable and that something drastic must be done to eliminate those instilling chaos in society, all while keeping the opposition doubtful or completely fooled into thinking he is not working to install a tyranny.”
“Hitherto, he has been quite successful in keeping this ambiguity in place…” said Jack.
“Yes, but this cannot be sustained for too long because each of his actions aimed at preparing the environment for the coup betrays his true intentions and many democratic people who had been inactive wake up and pass to the opposition. On this side of the process, waiting is already working against him. On the other hand, the MAGA supporters may also work against him. Many of the extremists may start to believe that he is too soft and look for other tyrannical leaders.
“Thus, there will be a moment in which he will have to do his volte-face, drop the remains of his mask, and assume his fully tyrannical personality. Without this moment, the transition to tyranny would not be irreversible. This would be his Rubicon moment. This will be the moment when he will cast the dice.
This must be an exact moment, precisely when the democratic forces are at a minimum. If he acts too early, democratic structures will still be strong enough to stop him. If he acts too late, the weakening of democracy will backfire as more people will turn to support it.
“If I were him, I would do it today,” Nicco concluded.
“Why?” asked Jack.
THE FLEETING OPPORTUNITY
“The transition to full tyranny must become irreversible before the campaign for the 2026 elections begins. Otherwise, the Prince risks losing his opportunity to become a tyrant. He has a razor-thin majority in Congress and has been implementing very unpopular measures, which may have turned the Republicans into a minority. If he loses Congress in 2026, he is finished. Therefore, he has strong reasons to act quickly to prevent this outcome. Since he can expect a strong resistance after his volte-face, he would need some time to repress it and convince people that the move to tyranny is irreversible. If the campaign starts when irreversibility has not been established, the power of the opposition may become irresistible, and he would be squashed in the 2026 elections.
“Giving the speed at which opposition is waking up, especially as a result of his invasion of California with federal forces, the airplane gift, the economic failures, his shameless support for Putin, the collapse of the DOGE attempt, the dismantling of social security to reduce taxation to the superrich, and so many other failures and aggressively tyrannical measures (like the degrading treatment of the senior senator from California) makes the volte-face more urgent.
“On the other hand, his deployment of military power at this moment will be difficult to repeat under the current democratic structures. This is the moment.
“It is also the time to stop him and keep open the chances for democratic survival. If the Pacific opposition prevails today, the threat will not be eliminated, but the country will survive to fight tyranny another day.”
…..
Manuel Hinds is a Fellow at The Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at Johns Hopkins University. He shared the Manhattan Institute's 2010 Hayek Prize. He has worked in 35 countries as a division chief and then as a consultant to the World Bank. He was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. His website is manuelhinds.com
[1] F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Crack Up, originally published in the February, March and April 1936 issues of Esquire. Now it is available also in the February 26, 2008 issue of the same magazine. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a4310/the-crack-up/
[2] N[iccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Chicago, University or Chicago Press, 1981, pp. 52.