The Benicia Herald, May 24, 2026, by Stephen Golub
Back in 1983, I scored a summer fellowship from my law school to research the plight of Cambodian refugees in Thailand. On the way back home, I stopped off in the Manila for a few days to see an old friend who was on his first overseas posting for the State Department. I mainly recall reconnecting with my pal and dealing with the aftermath of some bad oysters. But one discussion stands out…
It was in my friend’s living room, with a few of his fellow junior embassy staffers, debating the Philippines’ future. One professed no love for then-dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who’d dominated the nation since declaring martial law in 1972. But he viewed the autocrat as securely in place and thus claimed that he was “the only game in town.”
Marcos was gone less than three years later, deposed by the country’s People Power revolution.
It was not just Marcos who in 1986 proved to not be “the only game in town.” It was East Germany’s communist regime in 1989. It was the Soviet Union in 1991. It was South Africa’s apartheid rulers in the early 1990s. It was Indonesian’s Suharto in 1998. It was Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. It was Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. It was Brazil’s (and Trump ally) Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. It was Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina in 2024. It was Hungary’s (and Trump hero) Viktor Orban last month.
All of these ruthless rulers and regimes seemed securely in power…until just a few weeks, months or years before they weren’t. They fell due to a plethora of factors: popular pressure, external developments, self-inflicted wounds and/or good old-fashioned democratic voting.
Regardless, they fell.
The point merits mention in view of Donald Trump’s ongoing attempts to rig our elections, gut the rule of law, entrench mind-boggling corruption and otherwise despoil our democracy. Every day brings a new assault on not just our system but on values that many of us still share.
We can’t ignore such outrages. In fact, we should feel outraged. It’s a normal response to a thoroughly abnormal, abysmal state of affairs.
But, as demonstrated time after time and in place after place, the triumph of such efforts is never inevitable – as long as we don’t cave to them.
That’s something to bear in mind for our November midterm elections and beyond. I can’t downplay the threats our democracy faces. Things may often appear bleak in the months and years to come. But the future is never written in stone. We have the power to shape it.
As in many other nations, even in America’s darkest times there is never just one game in town.
Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.
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