Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, or for that matter in the world, as we approach the end of the first half of 2025 we can all agree if time is a river, we have been racing through turbulent white water. We do not know if further downstream lies a calmer sea or a precipitous waterfall, but fear the latter. The book I released in the Fall of 2024, To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Political Followers was designed to help us navigate these waters regardless of who won the US presidency, which at the time was unknown. It is now needed more than ever on both sides of the political aisle, and in countries far and wide. Let me bring you up to date.

Though the title of the book is To Stop a Tyrant, its focus is on what I call the prototyrant. Like the word prototype, this means an early version of what the finished product could become. My life’s work looks at the relationship with leaders through the lens of their followers. For me, this means that a prototyrant can only become a tyrant if the various circles of followers in the political system allow this to happen. Whether you support or oppose, or have mixed feelings about the current administration in the US, or in another country, you are one of those followers. The book encourages you to use your agency to shape the character and outcomes of that administration and offers avenues for doing this. 

One of the premises of my book is that the opposition will naturally take steps to thwart the emergence of a tyrant, but it is the prototyrant’s own followers who have the most agency to modify the leader’s behavior and policies. Therefore, my book is written to speak respectfully, and with strong notes of caution, to those supporters lest, like so many before them, they are betrayed by the leaders they elevated.  It is filled with strategies for keeping the leader focused on the social goals for which they were elected, and to put the brakes on other actions that threaten to undermine both the country and the leader’s own legacy. I am doing what I can to bring this to their attention and invite you to do so as well.

If you’re like me, you do a large portion of your “reading” these days by listening to audio books. I am delighted to tell you a beautiful reading of the book has been completed and will shortly be available on Audible. I read a brief preface and Dan and Devon Mushalko lend their professional voices to reading the body of the book. We will send out another announcement when it is up and available.

Due to a vagary in the book’s publishing, I am able to make a unique offer if you are part of a program or event that could incorporate To Stop a Tyrant into its design. On a limited basis, I am in a position to be able to offer you 20 to 100 copies of the book at no cost if you explain how your group will use it and if you pay the shipping costs which, in the continental US work out to about $2 to $2.50 per book (unfortunately, this offer does not help those outside the continental US as postal rates would be too high). Think about this for a program you may be conducting by the end of the year. Email me at irachaleff@cs.com

“No matter how noble your goals or how strong your morals are, the pressures and pleasures of power impact every one of us. A protection and antidote for this is paying great attention to who we gather around us.” Ruth Turner, Senior Advisor to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

All My Best

Ira