I recently remarked to a friend, a retired history professor, that Donald Trump reminded me of the infamous Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1922-1943).

“If he makes the airlines run on time, we’ll know,” she responded, jokingly referring to Mussolini’s supposed boast that he “made the trains run on time.”

(Before his rule, the poorly maintained Italian railway system had the dubious distinction of being chronically late).

The point of the boast was that Mussolini was a strong man who got things done. Styling himself as “Il Duce” (the leader), he created an extravagant personality cult and ruthless police state which skillfully utilized propaganda to brainwash Italians into believing that he alone could restore their country to the greatness of ancient Rome. Those who remained unconvinced were silenced through violence and terror.

What does Donald Trump have in common with Mussolini? Actually quite a lot.

Aside from a passing physical resemblance (jutting jaw, contemptuous sneer and belligerent posture), Trump, like Mussolini, is a master manipulator and shameless liar. He displays utter ruthlessness, revels in humiliating his opponents, whips his audiences into a frenzied state, promotes xenophobia, loves grandiose building projects, and has only one fixed principle – his own personal aggrandizement.

Above all, though he’s engaged in a democratic election process, Trump, I believe, harbors the same cynicism towards democracy as Mussolini, who viewed his country’s parliamentary system as weak and decadent, something initially to be circumvented and later abolished. Democracy, after all, is a messy way of governing and not well suited to the personality of an egomaniacal head of state.

Things didn’t end well for Mussolini or Italy. Driven by his own grandiose schemes, he entered into military alliance with Nazi Germany in 1939, embarked on ill-fated campaigns of conquest in North Africa and the Balkans, was deposed in 1943 after the Allies invaded and occupied his country, and was shot to death by partisans in 1945. His corpse was suspended upside down in a public square in Milan, where enraged crowds were permitted to defile it.

Would Donald Trump, if elected president, demonstrate the kind of dignified, restrained and judicious behavior we’ve come to expect of the leader of the world’s most prominent democracy or would he act like a Mussolini? I’d anticipate more “Il Duce” than “Mr. President.”

The real question about a President Trump presidency is whether our political system would be strong and resilient enough to restrain his worst impulses.

We have a robust constitutional system, one with checks and balances against the abuse of power by the chief executive. However, the system’s ability to push back against a repressive president assumes that its citizenry is prepared to remain faithful to both the letter and spirit of democracy’s rules. The Milgram experiment calls that into question.

In 1963, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram published an article on his experimental research on the capacity of ordinary people to resist social pressure to inflict pain on others. Using volunteers, Milgram divided his research subjects into two groups, “teachers” and “learners,” with members of each group placed in separate adjacent rooms where they could communicate with but not see one another.

The learner was given a list of word pairs to memorize. The teacher then read the first word of each pair to the learner, along with four possible matches, and the learner pressed a button to indicate his response. For each wrong answer, the teacher was instructed to throw a switch delivering an electric shock to the learner, increasing in increments of 15-volts at each incorrect response. As voltage levels rose, the learner would cry out or bang on the adjoining wall in apparent distress.

In fact, there were no shocks given. The learner was a covert Milgram confederate, and the shouting and banging noises were pre-recorded, all to make the teacher believe that he or she was inflicting real suffering. If the teacher voiced a desire to stop the experiment, Milgram pressured the subject into proceeding with a succession of verbal prods: “Please continue”; the experiment requires that you continue”; it is absolutely essential that you continue”; and “you have no other choice, you must go on.”

Though most of the experimental subjects evinced high levels of distress at causing innocent strangers pain and none were physically coerced into going on, an average of 61 percent continued to raise the jolts up to the maximum level of 450 volts.

The results were discouraging, demonstrating that the majority of ordinary people, under intense social pressure, were prepared to override deeply ingrained norms of right and wrong. The experiment, taking place less than two decades after World War II and contemporaneously with the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann, raised concerns that any country might succumb to the siren call of Nazism or Fascism.

The Milgram experiment underscored why good political leadership is so important and why, to borrow Abraham Lincoln’s phrase, we need leaders who will appeal to “the better angels of our nature.”

Elliott L. Epstein, a local attorney, is founder of Museum L-A . He is the author of “Lucifer’s Child,” a book about the 1984 oven-death murder of Angela Palmer. Epstein also is a volunteer member of the Joint Charter Commission’s work group on public works and utilities. He may be reached epsteinel@yahoo.com.