Trump claims to have "total authority" - - so did kings of long ago . . .

. . . and you see what happened to them.

Charles I of England
Charles was born into the House of Stuart and succeeded to the British kingship in 1625. His reign was marked by quarrels with the Parliament and civil war. . Charles believed in the divine right of kings from which he claimed absolute authority. From 1642, Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments in the English Civil War. After his defeat in 1645, he surrendered to a Scottish force that eventually handed him over to the English Parliament. Charles refused to accept his captors' demands for a constitutional monarchy. He eventually was captured, tried, convicted, and executed for high treason in January 1649.

The people who wrote our Constitution were the great-grandsons of the people who chopped off Charles' head.


The Man Who Would Be King
There was that great old movie, “The Man Who Would Be King” based on a Kipling tale about two British adventurers who found themselves in what is today’s Afghanistan ( also known as "the graveyard of empires”). One of the two (played by Sean Conroy) fancies himself the absolute king ruling over an isolated mountain tribe and is worshipped as a god by the locals. His fellow adventurer (played by Michael Caine) is a more moderate sort, and warns the would-be king about the folly of hubris. When it comes time for the king to take a bride (who turns out to be a beautiful 17 year old virgin), she bites him and draws blood during the marriage ceremony and the ignorant tribesmen suddenly realize that he is in fact mortal . . .

. . . and they chop off his head.

French royalty
Back in the late 1700's -- 1789-1799 -- the French royalty proclaimed they ruled because they were "bluebloods". So the peasants led them to the guillotine and chopped off their heads to check the color of their blood.

Hmmm. I'm beginning to see a pattern here.