Leading the charge. Is this what the very symbolic, if equally impotent and futile, charge of the Curia Hostilia looked in 52 BC? Well, at least they won't have to choke on the stench of presidential flesh - or that of thousands of his supporters. While legal proceedings are now rampant, the price for participation in this charge against democracy is slight.
In rejecting the grab as for power, I am denying the existence of a coup, more appropriately an autogolpe, against the legitimate government - one branch of it, precisely - such as that pulled off by the equally ineradicable Fujimori after seizing the presidency, in the 1990 upset, from the unfit clutches of my great Peruvian hero. The mechanics of coups d'etat are notoriously complex, and usually shrouded in shadows long after the collapse of the regime it established, but a few key markings of such a process can be clearly inferred, or even defined, from the great professor Luttwak's 1969 study with its wonderfully notable title. Among these dwells calculated planning - although throngs of anger may be directed towards existing beacons of power, they must serve an intended purpose, beyond vague abstractions of fear and terror and division - and the oligarchy of disturbing and disconnecting other nodes of power. If the very purpose was to stop the certification, the last in this very arduous process that is the American presidential election,
Genius and strategist - and not of the 2021 denial, if not overthrow, of the democracy he obligately served
In the time preceding, and very soon after the 2016 election I would have made great fuzz over attempts to describe the process, and therefore the result, as the "safest" in history. In many regards, this obsequious comment was of course an attempt to smooth over any possible crevice in the façade of legitimacy surrounding a very contentious contest. In fact, and due to circumstances beyond both Trump and any looming "establishment", whether global, national or undefined pecuniary, the presidential election of this last year saw a record number of absentee and pre-election day ballots. The celebratory-ritual value aside, of a united (if divided) electorate joining bodies in queue on a single date (this didn't use to be the case) in an orgasmic leverage of opinions - followed by four, or seven, or at least two years of impotence and undisturbed governance by the those unmerry few fit(ted) to make the actual decisions - has served a value . And just like the digital-based system of countries like Brazil, denounced by my former colleague Mikael Nordfeldth of the digital revolution Pirate party as dangerous to democracy as the result will always be open to changes slight or sudden, the cumulative adding of ballots before election date puts the legitimacy of the result in question. If you doubt this, ask any electoral observer exercising the vain clutches of the OSCE , and how many ballots are already laid - and perhaps mislaid - in Belarusian urns. A high pre-election date participation and, per analogy, postal ballots ripped from envelopes and then checked and transferred to a temporary resting place awaiting their rapture, is thus to be avoided whenever possible. And while this trial involved not only the mechanics and logistics of voting, but a worldwide pandemic unmatched since the 1960s, with its disproportionate effects on the already home-confided, so to speak, it is a feat which ought not be repeated - and to be fair is unlikely to in 2024.
The increasing contest for political power in an increasingly united, and now divided, America... how would the founders see it? In which camp would they put the blame?
As for other irregularities, or points of possible contention, I would hold only this: With regard to the counting, the bouncing of numbers, seemingly just in time to salvage a blue victory in hotly contested Pennsylvania (sometimes elsewhere) I would only say, in mirroring the , that it is, let's say, to be avoided. On the greater, and wholly undeniable problematics of delivering ballots post-election day, in certain constituencies or (let's not kid ourselves) states and not others, and refraining from hearing this issue in the Supreme Court on the (clearly outdated) excuse that no state has authority over another state's electoral system, or even reason to complain.
In light of this, it is perhaps slightly more understandable to witness the actions of the (mainly Trump) voters, and surely a few abstainers, exercising their partisan unity by charging the institution they had - simultaneously with their president - supposedly elected. It is a well-known truth that Congress, without division in houses (the lower and more "democratic" having, in my fair guess, the lowest score) had single-digits support even before this riot, or uprising, or coup attempt, or demonstration (the latter two being, on account of intent and conduct, undesirable epithets) and without an overhaul in content or electoral system, or powers, will continue to do so, or the incursion (now, there's a word) of this week will not be the last - just as it was not the first. Notably, however, the parodically wielded Confederate flag has seemingly, ignoring its smuggling in through state flags which only just ended with Mississippi's hard-fought attempts to make itself history in this regard as well, been waved for the first time in the chamber, and by a seeming foe of the republic as well. My my. At the same time, and whatever the intents of men carrying cable ties, and guns, and Warcraft-esque uniforms into the chamber, the death toll was clearly in the somewhat lukewarm defenders' favour, having probably (and correctly) assumed that this charging barbarian horde constituted the people, or at least an undeniable part of it. This fact, of course, must be countenanced, if this unique uprising is not to be multiplied in a metastasis of continuing, and never definite, downfall.
In the virtual, modern congress in 2121? Or rather, in 2131? Unlikely, all in all.
How then is this to be avoided further on, and how "guilty", if such a term is to be employed, are the different parties? Parallells have been made to previous challenges to American democracy, the bulk of which may be summed up by the Democrats' hard-won attempts to make the nominal equality of Southern blacks a sham. Previous devices, while more far-reaching and definitive, were more honest - and besides in a period where the American republic was still the most democratic experiment, , and did sport (fragmentary) female participation... to the extent as it did the male upper and upper-middle class, that is. Later conspiracies against democracy, Watergate being the most recognised, have been simultaneously obvious and harmful, but ultimately - on that count at least, which the great Frank Herbert christen Nixon as his "favourite president" - strengthened American freedom and its peculiar, Janus-faced relationship to political authority.
"The King has aimed a pistol at the nation's head, fired, and
The clearest course would be to finalise the long-touched (for too long, being debated since before his inaugural) question of impeachment of the clear inspiration, if not exactly director of this foul uprising. I am not so optimistic, although clearly, to play on an overused phrase, if this does not rise to the height (or, appropriately, the abysmal depths) of high crimes and misdemeanours, few things will. Whereas the Clinton trial was clearly politically motivated, the first Trump one even more so (and egregiously marred, even from hindsight, by the involvement of his successor's oldest son) and to that marred with statements of grotesque partisanship which would have earned the insertion of Speaker Gingrich's or Hastert's shoe (or dare I suggest hand) into whoever's rapid-closed rectum in reward for being so earnest and broadcast it to a progressively depressed nation. The Johnson one, a response to the very existence of a Democratic president over the just reunited states of 1865, may in some sense prove a better comparison, and rightly repudiated in a rebuttal of the quasi-parliamentary system whose tide this lone jackass could not counter. But sad as I may be for Johnson, Clinton and Trump in his fourth year, there is only reluctance and the effort of the philosophical seminar in summoning support for the president now in his fifth, and hopefully very final year.
Trumpism, as I have already claimed (and christened it) will not die with the death, let alone departure in full bodily functions of its author, nor can it in any serious sense be smoothed and written over by a trial, whether in the senate or a court or in the house, nor as many of the new Democrats would prefer, by the House (by the best of 1793 standards) or the emerging president. I stated before, with the sudden change of heart of president Obama on the question of legal recognition of same-sex marriage, that power alone keeps out a behaviour more befitting a Henry VIII, and while this is sordidly openly obvious in the case of Trumps (yes, even to many Republicans and oh yes, to Trump voters) would
American flags, rather consistent since the founding, now turned against American democracy's most potent symbol (?), the alleged unclaimed third victim of the 9/11 terrorists; now defaced, if milder than in 1815, by a threat entirely domestic and homegrown. Although, I suppose, we should be grateful the mask-weariness did not extend to those so committed to the destruction of - at the very least - the current political order?
Ultimately, the twilight of this demagogue was his gluttony, for a good run over the realities of office, for attention more than temporal power, for the raw opportunity of the moment, and whether he spawned this movement whose clutches reached well beyond what he intended, or could seriously imagine, is . In this, he represents an obliquely slanted or dysfunctional authoritarianism first and foremost of the melodrama, as many of us regarded him from the start. At 67, De Gaulle famously (and very publicly) stated himself unable and unwilling to initiate a dictatorship - though the obviousness of the statement, while technically with its limitations (once known to a people knowing the fetters of monarchy) sidelining the flame many, like Mitterrand, held to the remarkably autocratic nature of the fifth republic - and despite the increasing prestige of the medical profession, and of the nearly Trump (as well as De Gaulle) genes, well... at least physically, it was obvious the republic instituted by Madison, Jefferson and Franklin would not fall to the vain grasp of this pettiest of men. Well, even with him - as another Clodius, or I grant you, Caesar - out of the way, there are many others, and the republic demonised and incited against by the Clodii and Caesares of the 50s and 40s was, as any historian would tell you, already dying.
Inexorable putrefaction and malignant coups aside, the gates, as one fisherman trying his luck in the Rubicon may have observed, are opened and may - as then - have been opened already since a century or many decades at least. In this regard, the twilight seen may live up to the gloomy expectations rightly set by so many to the alleged light of the free world, a city no longer shining, but very, very much vibrant and pluralistic... perhaps, as the new masters anointed by "we, the" people will say, to a fault. How this conflict will play out in the longer run, beyond the lifespans of Trump and Biden and other near-octogenarians may, in my best guess, perhaps not do so during my own.
