The Sixth....?

 

The Anglophone, or even more so American, tradition of denominating disasters by numbers and dash (and thus, in its most commonplace sense, commemorating one of the most egregious and foreboding disasters of the past century unwittingly, to an often equally oblivious Swedish audience, as 9/11; to me, it sounds unconscionably abrogated to a minuscule convenience store or gas station) has now, since a year at least, been joined by the both hotly debated and contested-as-a-debating topic now known as 1/6, marking the charge - insurrection, rebellion, possibly treason, if you will, but in my mind not reaching the goals or often very serious efforts of an attempted (is there another kind, in civilised conversation?) coup - of the Capitol in Washington, D.C, and thus denigrating the throngs expressing long-held anger against that institution, and city, by the similar political clot verbally slung against the inhabitants of the building, or previously confined to the strictly verbal. 

I should not be remiss here and outright reject the widespread, and often bland, employment of the word "coup". Whereas "coup", by the previously mentioned Hitchens, has been used against Watergate (the mother of the many -gate suffixes) and there with some rhetorical relevance - if not in an academic sense - I am not quite so contended here. The use of Beer Hall Putsch, frivolously Godwinian but not without merit, most relativisers being unaware of this turn of events (or even that fifteen years later) has also been raised, whereas its corollary - certainly over the democratic Bavarian government's attempt on German democracy as well as the Nazi plagiarisers - would be the attack on the German Reichstag an equally chilling February 1933, plus aftermath. The repression now underway, finally, makes the comparison also somewhat debunked, in reality if not in spirit. 

You can put whomever you like as Hitler in this less tantalising analogy, but the mere fact that he held the presidency - for a fortnight - does not reinforce the apparent effects, let alone the presumed downfall of American constitutionalism during this apocalyptic Trump presidency... still, I admit, a queer and frightful phrase to pen. All institutions were - adequately, for all the failings of voters, courts, electors and senate - guarding against this possibility, openly flaunting their readiness to not execute their duties, lest it be to such an end as extend this which now could not, legally, be extended, the lack of a proper mass movement in line with the SA, let alone SS, and the continued reliance not only on constitutional structures and federalism (dented, long since, but not exactly Trump's prime goal) and diversity (yes, that term) of the broader conservative movement (if it is to be called thus) are arguments that this is, if not something sui generis, something very different from the transformed Thule society now poised to subdue and destroy the Western world. Focus on his son-in-law and his tribe, or now substituting Muslims for Jews and... Brazilians, Mexicans, Haitians, for the Slavs (remember them, or the chilling intricacies rung out by the mere words Generalplan Ost?) for no particular reason. 

This last bark of the old president is now poised to be his undoing from repeating the feat of Cleveland and becoming - now that he, seemingly, recognises he is not, and cannot not steal nor lawyer himself to victory, whether this would appropriately have been waged on the irregularities which, as before, is part of any election, and certainly one so grand and stuffed with pre-election day ballots - the first president to return with vengeance, but has hardly chipped his already-condemned status. Cleveland was booted, surely not without some irregularity (if not, proved before court, not mentioning the widespread practices of the South firmly holding his back) and resurged in success. The cries that now, now, his visage must not be seen again at the walk to the Oval Office, lest the world be plummeting, cannot be taken seriously than those before it. This must not be, shriek the trumpets from much of the political establishment, and major corporations which have not - in his hour of need - come to this fascist's aid. However, just as the first the , the second should not be discounted from being another dent in the shining castle of electoral democracy, which cannot long bear the brunt of political crimes (even those which, in truth, be considered criminal) when aimed firmly at one side, and wielded as a hose to blot out and silence their vandals, but not so much others. And this time, now, irrevocably, undeniably, his is the glory and gasp of having officiated, if not outright orchestrated, a vicious attack on the other branch of government. Only the assault on the Supreme Court and the Nine not occurring - nor likely to occur soon, lest Democrats (big D, folks!) are to respond in kind, would have made the autocratic tendencies clearer. 

Are these tendencies without real merit, without real ambition? Well, apart from "self-confidence", enough to adequate to that of a Targaryen, no flatter adequately satisfies The Donald's persona better than "ambition", although I find the description a bit short. What ambition? Which desires has he not already fulfilled? And if someone, including myself, and many vociferous unshakeable Trump critics, have decried his run as a joke turning into a reality and then into nightmare, rhyming poorly with the star-gazing, fate-driven, youthfully certain Caesar or Temüjin or other figure content only with the greatest of ambition. Indeed, even for one poised to laugh and mutter gall-laden content at that announcement, his own review of the presidency were stark and Martin-esque indeed. 

But it is for the grander question of what will come out of this, and the future of the institutions now assaulted by a president, by one man, now presumably clear of him (?), or so many of them may think, that I wish to speak. For the enemies of an autocrat seldom uphold credible democratic credentials, and this tyrant - in the classical sense - has, as his forbearers, arisen not through a firm and healthy liberal democracy, but against one in decay.* 

There is, most certainly, a consensus a healthy - meaning somewhat breathing - two-party system. And surely, if not in print or outspoken, a desire for the Trump phenomenon - if not the broader "Kekist movement" - to just go away, preferably in a gurgle- and defecation-inducing stroke so very long heralded, or even by an assassin's bullet, or blade, or novichok-laced coke (no chance there, more than one with rum). But will this ? The clear message from the second impeachment - presided over by the Batman-seasoned Senator Leahy himself - was clear as no water has been; the loud never-Trumpers remain, and clear as the majority being against Trump well before the charges pertained to were charged, committed or imagined, but no large chunk of Republicans and no auspicious names, save that of already declared opponent and candidate Romney (now of Utah) said clearly no, if with the somewhat better excuse of the object of their ire being, for the moment, no longer an occupant of the office from which he should be expelled. Whereas no (firm) evidence suggest one cannot do such a thing, the only proposed purpose - the language or symbolism of doing so anyway, because - of disbarring (the "dis" not amounting to a Bush-ism; remember him and why he should be impeached?) this most undesired - by much of Washington, not of the country - from even announcing yet another run, and the just as unspoken but more chilling belief that this would not be employed against another, far from announced candidate in the future, was bad enough, and in a sense took this plummet of decorum to levels not seen with the 2019 impeachment (and, let's be fair, more predictable) 2020 acquittal. The fact that Trump has plummeted, whether that happened in 2020 or before or even in 2016, is quite beside that point. For these institutions will endure longer than Trump, lest you truly believe in the Trumpocalypse, in which case I propose sudden, and very real, emigration. More dismaying than the failed impeachment - but for this obvious statement on its absurdity, I would surely would have favoured it - is the effects that outside of him will change the landscape of American democracy so far as to make them unrecognisable. 

Most of all, the age-old (millennia, if you discount the unspoken condition "American constitutionalism") question of the filibuster is now, displeasingly given the apparent divisions in electorate as well as parties, taken to the next level; now, a slim majority of not even fifty-one must govern, lest the forces . The apocalyptic . As already, more predictably, shouted from across the aisle, with less grace than gratitude, the promise of a filibuster gone in favour of simple majoritarianism (yay, said no thinking person desiring this state of affairs to be replaced by stable consensus and democratic institutionalism) which only bodes for further downfall, once the regained speaker's chair by a god-fearing vice president (possibly not Mr. Pence of the 1/6 events), and possibly the generally recognised speaker's chair too, and even the West Wing... could it be possible? Well, could it be possible for the auspiciously separatist, racist, and often Ku Klux Klan-touting Democrats from retaking the White House ? Only those living so long as to see the auspiciously doomed, pre-fascist (or proto-fascist? Which prefix would do?) year of 1884 (I shall not subvert American democracy by breathing 1876, even to the figure seven) will surely see. 

What then will come out of this? The prime desire, just as during impeachment, of overturning the cart arraigned against the politics of decency, that is, of certain unalterable truths or policies not shared at all by all the voters, if even half of them, will most surely fail, for like with assassination, the only thing coming out of a political trial - I have, if not out of sympathy with Trump, hard to see it as anything else, and shadow in this case of that counts for posture - 

It would do well thus to recall Mr. Fawlty's words on the fish, and of the American democracy of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and others being well and by margin unfit for consumption, and the causes for this not solely resting with the over-aged, overtly aggressively heterosexual, and other things, braggart the Republican party and - at the core of this - their electorate has made its beacon and guiding pilot. The designs now imposed, upon an hour , or even glanced at and championed, would surely hasten or consummate (let us say) the decline of the institutions whose destruction Trump's presence were considered synonymous with. American democracy still lives, admittedly, due to these institutions still relished in name if not always, or often, in spirit enduring throughout a time where there was real, intense pressure (as there had been before) just as they did thirteen months ago - no resuscitation. On that note, let us hold it, and consider whether razing the decidedly guiding democracy of the West (India being by far greater, but even now less consequential) for the purpose of the death, political or otherwise, of a seventy-five year old man once, and future, labeled president. For those who seek to perpetuate not the union pledged by Madison et al, heralded by Lincoln and King, as of yet in progress, but sacrifice it for a design better fitting their earthly ends, with the excuse of this man being chained to the pyre, must surely be recognised as arsonists of democracy indeed. 

* = Tyrannos, tyrant, being the appropriate term, I think... if yet indicting, beyond Trump, the Athens which spawned him  ;-)