“What’s it going to take for us to wake up…?”
I thought I’d lived through history during the assassinations of the 1960s, the Apollo 11 moon landing, Watergate and Nixon’s resignation, September 11, and the election of the first Black president. Then came Trumpism, COVID, and the upending of constitutional order. This feels more like the end of history.
Heather Cox Richardson makes history her business. She brings that perspective to Elon Musk’s nuttiness even as “the lug nuts on the wheels of the Musk-Trump government bus” seem to be coming off.
Fellow historian Timothy Snyder concurs, posting, “Something is shifting. They are still breaking things and stealing things. And they will keep trying to break and to steal. But the propaganda magic around the oligarchical coup is fading.”
Let’s hope. Richardson writes from Maine:
Historian Johann Neem, a specialist in the American Revolution, turned to political theorist John Locke to explore the larger meaning of Trump’s destructive course. The founders who threw off monarchy and constructed our constitutional government looked to Locke for their guiding principles. In his 1690 Second Treatise on Government, Locke noted that when a leader disregards constitutional order, he gives up legitimacy and the people are justified in treating him as a “thief and a robber.” “[W]hosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law and makes use of the force he has under his command…ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another,” Locke wrote.
Neem notes that Trump won the election and his party holds majorities in both chambers of Congress. He could have used his legitimate constitutional authority but instead, “with the aid of Elon Musk, has consistently violated the Constitution and willingly broken laws.” Neem warned that courts move too slowly to rein Trump in. He urged Congress to perform its constitutional duty to remove Trump from office, and urged voters to make it clear to members of Congress that we expect them to “uphold their obligations and protect our freedom.”
“Otherwise,” Neem writes, “Americans will be subject to a pretender who claims the power but not the legitimate authority of the presidency.” He continues: “Trump’s actions threaten the legitimacy of government itself.”
That is the autocrat playbook. That has been the Republican playbook ever since the 1930s. FDR’s administration meant conservatives’ ability to taylor government exclusively to the needs and desires of the rich was slipping. Then the social revolutions of the 1960s galvanized conservatives to action. Decades of backlash investment into think tanks and media later, here we are. But you know that.
Americans have failed to learn the lessons of history. Whether through complacency or deliberate undermining of public edcuation is unclear. But Sen. Angus King (I-ME) reminded the Senate in a floor speech last week. Trump’s actions are “absolutely straight up unconstitutional” and as “illegal” as Nixon’s impoundment efforts in 1973:
“[T]he reason the framers designed our Constitution the way they did was that they were afraid of concentrated power,” King said. “They had just fought a brutal eight-year war with a king. They didn’t want a king. They wanted a constitutional republic, where power was divided between the Congress and the president and the courts, and we are collapsing that structure,” King said. “[T]he people cheering this on I fear, in a reasonably short period of time, are going to say where did this go? How did this happen? How did we make our president into a monarch? How did this happen? How it happened,” he said to his Senate colleagues, “is we gave it up! James Madison thought we would fight for our power, but no. Right now we’re just sitting back and watching it happen.”
“This is the most serious assault on our Constitution in the history of this country,” King said. “It’s the most serious assault on the very structure of our Constitution, which is designed to protect our freedoms and liberty, in the history of this country. It is a constitutional crisis…. Many of my friends in this body say it will be hard, we don’t want to buck the President, we’ll let the courts take care of it…. [T]hat’s a copout. It’s our responsibility to protect the Constitution. That’s what we swear to when we enter this body.”
“What’s it going to take for us to wake up…I mean this entire body, to wake up to what’s going on here? Is it going to be too late? Is it going to be when the President has secreted all this power and the Congress is an afterthought? What’s it going to take?”
“[T]his a constitutional crisis, and we’ve got to respond to it. I’m just waiting for this whole body to stand up and say no, no, we don’t do it this way. We don’t do it this way. We do things constitutionally. [T]hat’s what the framers intended. They didn’t intend to have an efficient dictatorship, and that’s what we’re headed for…. We’ve got to wake up, protect this institution, but much more importantly protect the people of the United States of America.”
The problem is that the Republican majority to whom King is appealing don’t want to defend the Constitution. They don’t want free and fair elections if they cannot predetermine the outcome. They want to ignore the will of the people when the country’s mood turns against them.
Richardson offers more historical common sense from Maine, including a yardstick once used to gauge public opinion: “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.” Let’s hope so.
