The heart of the matter
Peter Baker on the implications of the indictment:
But not since the framers emerged from Independence Hall on that clear, cool day in Philadelphia 236 years ago has any president who was voted out of office been accused of plotting to hold onto power in an elaborate scheme of deception and intimidation that would lead to violence in the halls of Congress.
What makes the indictment against Donald J. Trump on Tuesday so breathtaking is not that it is the first time a president has been charged with a crime or even the second. Mr. Trump already holds those records. But as serious as hush money and classified documents may be, this third indictment in four months gets to the heart of the matter, the issue that will define the future of American democracy.
That is, will it cease to be any kind of democracy and become just a series of dictatorships.
At the core of the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump is no less than the viability of the system constructed during that summer in Philadelphia. Can a sitting president spread lies about an election and try to employ the authority of the government to overturn the will of the voters without consequence? The question would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, but the Trump case raises the kind of specter more familiar in countries with histories of coups and juntas and dictators.
Exactly. This is Pinochet territory, Berlusconi territory, Mussolini and Hitler territory.
In a 45-page, four-count indictment, Mr. Smith dispensed with the notion that Mr. Trump believed his claims of election fraud. “The defendant knew that they were false,” it said, and made them anyway to “create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”
And, in fact, in the country itself, and its political system, and its relationship to justice, truth, fair dealing, law…pretty much ever broadly liberal ideal you can think of. It’s eroded mine down to something smaller than an ant.
Having followed OB’s link, and having read the Peter Baker article in the NYT, I conclude that Trump has managed to divide America so seriously that one must look back to the lead-up to the Civil War of the 1860s to get a decent perspective. It is like Chicago in the Prohibition Era on steroids, and whichever way it plays out, it is dead set to become to America’s domestic politics what the San Andreas Fault is to its geology.
I regard the US President as being something of an elected 18th Century European monarch, with corresponding powers. Here in Australia, I believe we are fortunate to have as the official Head of State the crowned monarch of another country, namely at present King Charles of the UK, who has only one power that matters: the right, through his or her appointed underling (the Australian Governor-General) to dissolve a hung Parliament and immediately call a fresh election. That leaves the final decision on the contentious matter that hung the Parliament to the general population.
Australian history thus becomes an offshoot of British history, going back through Cromwell and the Civil War to Magna Carta and beyond as far as you like. So fortunately for us, we are more likely to be conquered by a Martian invasion than by the likes of some local Donald Trump.
Omar, does one preclude the other though? Australia and NZ are alike enough that many of our governing structures are prone to the same weaknesses. Much of the independence of the Judiciary and Government Departments is ultimately a matter of convention. Historically we’ve had a pretty good run with our democracies functioning. If we ended up with the right social dynamics, what would stop corrupt authoritarian with enough popular support taking over?
As for the US, as I understand it the Presidency as initially devised didn’t have all that much power. In practice, Congress has become more and more willing to both hand power to the President, and permit ‘dynamic’ Presidents to assume powers they arguably don’t have. Congress has become increasingly moribund and ineffective and now practically throws power at the President, as long as they’re of the same party.
In my view the only thing that makes democracy strong as a means of government is when the populace actively care about it. I don’t think it is a natural form of government for humans, it requires too much intellectual involvement from too many.
Rob @#2:: I remember an ABC Radio interview with Norman Mailer, in which Mailer declared that in his opinion, the default condition of humanity was fascism. Food for thought, so I chewed it over for a while, then decided that Mailer was wrong.
But his line of thought was sound. I now think that our default condition is feudalism. Social divisions between various ranks of nobility and commoners (literally people of the common lands of Britain before the Industrial Revolution brought the parliamentary Enclosure Acts., 1604-1914.)
Feudalism worked by the ruling lords retaining control of military force, and through never-ending brawls among themselves, trying always at extending their own fiefdoms at one another’s expense. (Vide the Wars of the Roses.) Fascism is a latter-day variant of feudalism.
America was first colonised by the last of the feudal Europeans (the Portuguese followed closely be the Spaniards.) Lured by the prospects of legendary South and Central American gold, those were the parts of America they headed for. The (Protestant) Puritans had to settle for the apparently less favourable North America, which turned out to be the best choice. The feudal and Catholic mindsets kept South America backward relative to the US and Canada. The stage was then set for the Monroe Doctrine, followed by the Cuban Revolution and Second Declaration of Havana.
Rob: Democracy is not a natural form of government for humans because it is not natural for humans to live in societies complex enough to warrant it. I think that all political philosophy should be best regarded as being akin to sanitary engineering – a body of painfully acquired practical knowledge as to how humans can live healthily in unnaturally large and dense concentrations. Indeed, considering their relative records of success, perhaps the relative levels of esteem enjoyed by political philosophers and sanitary engineers are precisely reversed relative to their merits.
To #2 I should add the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which was as close to Armageddon as I hope this planet will ever go. (Stars are on one view, planets not so lucky.)