Let’s openly admit it, to ourselves and to history: Our Constitution, which cannot protect us from our own government, is dead. After 250 years of uneven existence, the document can finally be laid to rest. As it stands, the Constitution is not worth the parchment it is printed on.
The Trump presidency has stripped the “American Constitution” of its reason to exist: Now, it’s an emperor without clothes. Constitution or no, Americans now stand naked and defenseless before the random powers of their government and its president, whose ipso facto one-man constitution has replaced the original. Under his “federal immunity,” the government can shoot and arrest its citizens at will. Our vaunted Constitution can neither moderate its hyperactive chief executive nor muzzle his trigger-happy enforcers.
Even if Democrats return to power, the Constitution — once trampled on and debased — will not regain its traditional honor in our nation. As the Old World saying goes, a rose has fallen into the toilet and cannot regain its full fragrance even after a hundred washings. Our Constitution has fallen into the toilet.
Two questions demand further clarity: First, how strong is Trump’s power in America as it is constituted now? Second, why are Trumpsters so desperate to keep their power forever?
To answer the first one: In naked power equation, the Trump government has everything and citizens nothing. The government has all the necessary instruments of control and people have only their bodies and voice. One ICE agent can wipe out a whole street crowd without breaking a sweat. Everywhere in America, citizen protesters are still alive only because government agents, each with a license to kill, are sparing them. Every ICE agent — with guns, handcuffs, detention centers at his disposal — is our jury, judge and executioner. Soothsayers tell us that our words are more powerful than government swords. But, no words have ever stopped flying bullets.
Power is measured by its counterbalancing opposition (the less the opposition, the greater the power), and Trump’s power is simply too invincible to measure. With all the complements of federal government concentrated in their singular possession, Trumpsters are unstoppable: They will continue to expand Trump’s power as long as the way is clear for them. With the Constitution now dead but not yet buried, Trumpsters face no consequences for their actions. With the generous blessings from SCOTUS, Congress and oligarchs, Trump’s power is wholly unrestrained by either shame or self-reflection. He can say whatever comes to mind without constraint. If he wants money, or someone arrested, or a country invaded, he simply orders it and it’s done. No ruler in human history has ever enjoyed such freedom of power.
Now, let’s consider the second question: Every ruler wants to rule unopposed and to stay in power forever. With two or three exceptions in the entire history of humanity, no ruler has ever wanted to give up power voluntarily. All American presidents before Trump followed the rules of peaceful transfer of power because American citizens would not have tolerated any such violations of America’s sacred pledge to itself. Trump is in the best position to ignore precedents and perpetuate his power indefinitely, something that other American presidents only dreamed about. Today, with the “frog in the pot” strategy working, Trump has conditioned people to expect (and accept) anything from him as fait accompli.
Then, what explains his motive to stay in power forever? The simplest answer is that he has no other choice: For Trump and his cohort, hardly a day goes by without committing impeachable offenses. Unless he stays in power forever, he will face his “reckoning,” as the New York Times predicts, losing everything he’s got, including his freedom. Trumpsters have every reason to make sure that Democrats don’t ever come back to handcuff them. There won’t be enough federal prisons to hold all (former) Trump officials for their sins and crimes. Either their power is forever or they are gone forever: Trumpsters must shoot or imprison all their enemies now while they still can. With no plans for a peaceful transfer of power, either Trumpsters hold onto their power forever or they will have to endure the Democrats’ fullest revenge. Meanwhile, Trumpsters enjoy immense power now, virtually independent of the Constitution or “We the People.” They are making hay while the sun shines.
The only way for the people to overthrow their legitimate government is by physically destroying its ruling ability, which Americans have not experienced since 1776. These bloody revolutions are so rare that we capitalize them as historic legacies, such as the American Revolution, French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution and so on, to commemorate these rare people’s wins: More often than not, numbers are on their side and no government has had enough bullets to kill them all.
Such classic mass revolutions have now been replaced by organized citizen protests, such as the failed “Jasmine Revolutions,” as a way to overthrow their government. A successful recent example comes from South Koreans who — just with their sheer number and unified emotional energy — sent two of their last three presidents to prison for corruption. Their massive citizen outrage forced their National Assembly (Congress) and Supreme Court to impeach and imprison the president, former president Yoon receiving a life sentence only three days ago for attempting to call martial law.
Thomas Jefferson defined democracy as the government fearing the people, and tyranny as the opposite. The Korean government trembles before its people while in America, the people are deathly afraid of their government.
How ironic! The Koreans — who learned about democracy from us only a century ago and copied our Constitution verbatim — can now teach us how to retake our democracy.
Jon Huer, retired professor, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.