Over the years, the US presidency has accumulated more and more emergency powers. The overarching law we have heard about recently is the Insurrection Act, which originated with legislation passed in 1792, and evolved through 1871, according to an article on the website of the Brennan Center for Justice. But further presidential autonomy seems to collect naturally during any national crisis. The most recent massive infusion followed the national bowel-watering panic induced by the terrorist attacks on 9-11-2001.
Humans are simple-minded creatures. I say this as a human. It's easy to fall into the idea that the President is the most powerful official in the country. In fact, as the Constitution is written, Congress is the dominant branch. Wonder why government seems to be such an unproductive mess? We were literally designed to be run by committee -- a really big committee, gathered from a wide and varied nation where the voters know very little about how their fellow citizens live in other parts of it.
As a result of the time lag in Congress to negotiate actions, and the natural human tendency to identify a single leader, even Supreme Court justices fall into the belief that the power of the President should be absolute.
Enter the con man, mob boss, silver spoon baby grown into a massively self-centered adult-size body with a 12-year-old's understanding of history. And the Supreme Court has made him untouchable. His word is law, sort of. He spews out executive orders like royal decrees, and his Congress does not challenge him. Some of them are now, because he finally did something that might make the rich poorer, but even that effort faces headwinds from MAGA faithful and jelly-kneed Republicans who still think that facing a primary challenge is the worst thing that can happen to them.
Trump is himself an emergency. His election was quite possibly a mortal wound to this country. We won't know for a little while yet. According to a post I saw yesterday on social media, he will probably invoke the Insurrection Act on April 20, giving himself the power to use the US military against US citizens on home soil. The lengthy post laid out the dire consequences of this action. Basically, get ready for a lot of arrests and show trials of high profile Trump opponents, a clamp down on all forms of journalism, immediate harsh restrictions on free expression, and the roundup of millions of uncooperative people. Protests will be infiltrated by impostors who will initiate violence, justifying violent response by the activated military forces. Lots of people will disappear. All of those mean-looking people who march with swastika flags will suddenly be deputized to bust heads officially.
In other words, we will undergo a parallel to the first days of Hitler's power, followed by a climate of forced agreement maintained by deadly force. Execution for treason will be common, and swiftly administered. Treason means any criticism of the regime.
Authoritarians depend on official violence and the fear of it to compel citizens to obey. The loudmouths with the AR-15s and tactical gear who have been braying about tyranny will do nothing to fight it now, because they never really wanted liberty for all, only for their own narrow beliefs. They don't believe in freedom. They believe that might makes right. So they will make up the citizen militias that energetically crush the liberty of anyone who strays from the permitted roles and behaviors of the dictatorship.
Trump's arrival in the Oval Office for his second grab at the wealth of the country guaranteed a cascade of emergencies. He overlooks most of them, because they're hitting little people. No reason to skip a grotesque party at Maga Lardo or miss a round of golf because some peasants just suffered tornado damage or flooding. The increasing negative emotions in the country give him more power, because so many people have been so well trained to blame the wrong actors for their troubles. Their emergencies set the stage for whatever event the administration chooses as the excuse to unleash the full power of government sanctioned violence against its own citizens.
Trump is just a symptom and a tool of two major promoters of authoritarian government: theocracy and technocracy. The Christian nationalists want boys to be boys and girls to be girls who grow up to be men and women who understand their places under a God whose words and motives vary at the convenience of whoever is in charge at the time. The technocrats think that the world should be run by emotionless people who aspire to be machines. Both groups have a central idea of what our human purpose should be. Neither of them think that it's "to have fun."
When Jimmy Carter called for nationwide introspection at the end of the 1970s, he was just repeating the age-old human question: Why are we here? Humans used to fight over territory and resources. That period merged with the long spell in which we fought over ideas. Those ideas usually hinged on who should control territory and resources in the name of what god or philosophy. Most people seem to prefer the periods between conflicts, but a percentage of humans enjoys war, destruction, cruelty, torture, and killing. There may be a majority opinion, but there is no universal standard. The violent minority -- known by their passionate embrace of firearms -- has long railed against democracy, because they each only have one vote but they have 30 rounds in the magazine. No fair!
The same social media post warning about Trump invoking the Insurrection Act on April 20 said that Project 2025 had called for invoking it on the first day of his term. Many of us expected something like that. Reality seldom follows the script exactly. It was better politics for the administration to bumble and stumble toward a full crackdown. It looks more organic that way, less plotted. He doesn't have to satisfy voters to win reelection, but he does have an easier time if the population believes that "he's only doing what he has to do to protect us." He's promoting the general welfare and providing for the common defense. His Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Homeland Security will attest to that. Coincidentally, they're both on the advisory panel who will recommend for or against invoking that Insurrection Act.
If your vision of humanity's future is a soft-focused, congenial anarchy in which we're each free to be whatever benign thing we want to be, understand that even that will need some organization like the government institutions that we had, to assure that needs are met. The mob currently in power stands for the exact opposite. Their view is regimented, narrow, and not afraid to hurt you. They will do that with or without something as drastic as the Insurrection Act.
No comments:
Post a Comment