The Surest Path to Dictatorship
A quick plug for a short primer about the Insurrection Act
This isn’t a proper post. I’m just writing to encourage my subscribers to read an essential explainer from Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith in the New York Times (at this gift link) about the extreme danger posed by President Donald Trump invoking the Insurrection Act.
I talk about this a lot, but I’m not a lawyer or expert on the Constitution. I’ve been waiting for a while to read something like this op-ed. It’s short, clearly written, and does an excellent job of laying out what’s confronting us. In my recent conversation with Sam Harris, I likened the Insurrection Act to Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, which gave the German chancellor of the time greatly enhanced powers to govern by decree in an emergency. Adolf Hitler used these powers to transform himself into a dictator while never abrogating the constitution. I’ve been assuming Trump could do something similar with the Insurrection Act, and Bauer and Goldsmith have now confirmed this to my satisfaction.
My point isn’t to suggest Trump is “as bad as Hitler.” It’s to say that, however bad Trump proves to be, the Insurrection Act would be the quickest and easiest way for him to enhance his own powers far beyond anything Americans have ever seen or endured.
A halfway functional Congress would take Bauer and Goldsmith’s advice and pass reform of the Insurrection Act immediately. The authors suggest what legislators should do. But Bauer and Goldsmith surely know that this is extremely unlikely to happen—because the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are fully under Trump’s thumb and are terrified of defying him. The only possible path to it happening involves Democrats dropping all other asks in negotiations over reopening the government in favor of one, nonnegotiable demand: The Insurrection Act must be reformed or the government will remain shuttered for good. That might not work—Republicans might be willing to live with an endless shutdown—but it’s worth trying and would show that the Democrats at least understand what the country is confronting. (Dickering over subsidies for the Affordable Care Act falls far short of the gravity of the moment.)
This is, once again, a gift link. Please click through, read the piece, and then use the same link to share it as widely as you can. My readers know I try to avoid breathless rhetoric and alarmism. I hope that will convince you of how important I think this is, and therefore of how important I think it is for you to consider it important, too.
"The only possible path to it happening involves Democrats dropping all other asks in negotiations over reopening the government in favor of one, nonnegotiable demand: The Insurrection Act must be reformed or the government will remain shuttered for good. That might not work—Republicans might be willing to live with an endless shutdown—but it’s worth trying and would show that the Democrats at least understand what the country is confronting. (Dickering over subsidies for the Affordable Care Act falls far short of the gravity of the moment.) "
Counter-point Damon, and one that, given arguments that you have endorsed in the past, is at least worth considering. If it is the case--and there is evidence to support your past affirmations in this regard, though I'm not sure that evidence is entirely dispositive--that the crucial number of mostly uninformed voters necessary to successfully act politically against Trump cannot be rallied by talking about "democracy" or "fascism" (and it seems obvious to me that talking about the Insurrection Act falls into this category), but rather need to be communicated with in terms of bread and butter issues (and it seems obvious to me that being able to afford health care fall into that category), then the Democrats are playing the best they can with the bad hand they have right now, and making the shutdown, so far as their limited ability to influence the dominant narrative, ENTIRELY about health care, is a smart move. Making it about the Insurrection Act, according to this line of reasoning, isn't worth trying, because the Democrats' polling numbers would drop even further (because of the aforementioned disinterest among swing voters about Trump's undemocratic actions or threats), and the Democratic leadership wouldn't be able to hold together what little leverage they currently have over Trump, and the move would be an embarrassing failure. Trump would win the funding battle, and plus there would be no reforms of the Insurrection Act in any case. But if health care is the one thing the polls well enough to keep Democrat members of the House and Senate holding firm, then they should stick with it, as it is their only realistic chance of making Trump look weak, making him look bad among low-income voters who are really going to be hurt by rising premiums and the collapsing ACA marketplace, and thus positioning themselves--whether before the midterm or after--to make more important demands, like reforming the Insurrection Act.
Am I wrong?
In Trump’s current state, simultaneously convinced that he’s always right, certain that he has an overwhelming mandate, increasingly mentally muddled and physically weakening, and lastly terrified that a mid-term victory for the Democrats in either the House, the Senate, or both would lead not only to the significant curtailment of his policies, but in the case of the House would almost certainly lead to a third impeachment he is likely to try anything. This makes him uniquely dangerous
I’m in full support of the No Kings protests launching across the country today, and I pray they will be peaceful, but I’m fairly certain that some elements of the right will attempt provocations in order to give Trump the slightest reason to retaliate with the National Guard or even the regular army and Marines.
Our history proves nothing as much as that relatively small incidents can have enormous repercussions, starting with the protests in Boston and other port cities following the Stamp Act, continuing through that fateful day on the Lexington Green and at the North Bridge and culminating at Yorktown. We are nation conceived in the politics of reason and the Enlightenment but born in violence and at times sustained in violence (our Civil War).
This is different. For the first time in that history, we have managed to elect to the presidency a a man who utterly disdains and disavows our electoral process, our Constitution, and the rule of law. He has (or believes he has) at his disposal the most powerful military force in the world and what he believes to be a mandate to use it as he chooses. He is praying for a spark of violence and he’s doing nearly everything he can to induce it.
To this extent, I am actually thankful for that infamous meeting of ‘his’ generals and admirals with its strutting, puerile Hegseth and inchorently raging Trump. If our military leaders weren’t sure beforehand just how crazy things were with these two in charge, they learned it then, and I’m certain there have been some very serious and very quiet discussions among them about the perils of the moment.
I’m an American of just over 80, and so I’ve lived through some pretty tumultuous times. But this moment strikes me as something utterly new, and because of that, so much more unpredictable.