"A Republic--If You Can Keep It"

But…what if we can’t keep it?  What if our Republic is destroyed?

Do we have a Plan B?

It never seriously occurred to me that perhaps we couldn’t keep it.  I was only four years old when I read “Ben and Me”, a charming little biography of Benjamin Franklin for children, ostensibly written by his pet mouse Amos.  Ever since, I have carried with me Franklin’s famous statement naming the new form of government the Founders had created—a Republic—and his warning of its vulnerability.  But all during my ensuing eighty-five years of life in a post-New Deal America, I’ve simply assumed that our famous “experiment” in democracy had long-since proved its point and would endure into eternity—the arc of the moral universe presumably now permanently bent toward justice.  I never seriously doubted that we couldn’t and wouldn’t keep this Republic as a beacon of light for ourselves and the world, for all time.

Well, it ain’t necessarily so.  Today I must consider that Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the wisest American of all time, foresaw what is happening today.  He foresaw that the ongoing survival of our Republic was anything but guaranteed.  He foresaw that adherence to that new Constitution was entirely voluntary.  He foresaw that a depraved scofflaw in control of the levers of power could knock the whole thing down like a proverbial house of cards. 

And to Franklin, the possibility—indeed, the likelihood—was all too obvious.  He well understood that for ten thousand years before this “experiment” in democracy, all that humanity had known was endless cycles of imperial dominance by whichever leaders proved superior at asserting and exercising raw power over their subjects and their neighbors.  That had been the way of the world forever.  Who in their right mind would think you could issue a few high-minded documents suggesting a radical alternative, and expect remorseless rulers around the globe to step aside? 

Bear in mind that this alternative, by the way, was supported by only about 40% of Franklin’s fellow colonists, the "Patriots”, while the rest either remained Loyalists who rather liked being “subjects” of a King, or folks who were just keeping their heads down and staying clear of the whole mess until they could figure out whom to obey when this little unpleasantness was all over.

Ben well understood that this Republic was an experiment.  An inveterate scientist, he profoundly understood that many/most experiments demonstrate only what will fail to work, not what will successfully work.  And now, I find myself forced to ponder the possibility that the coup initiated by Donald Trump and his “2025” co-conspirators is actually succeeding—that we could not, in fact, “keep it”.  I take no pleasure in forcing myself to consider this out loud.  But I have often striven to consider alternatives to the received truth, and I can’t stop doing that now just because thinking the unthinkable seems defeatist.  Of course, I am not going to stop doing everything I can to defeat Trump’s coup, but I want to be clear(er) about the nature, strength, and reality of the challenge.

There are ten specific, concrete actions autocrats use to effect a coup.  Professor Kim Scheppele of Princeton University has definitively outlined these tools used by leaders of ostensibly democratic countries to overturn longstanding rules of law, to seize essentially unlimited power for themselves.  You will readily recognize many in her list that Trump and his lackeys have executed already in their first year, with three years left for them to complete the job:

1.         Win elections that are “free  and fair” (at least the first time).

2.        Systematically dismantle checks on executive power.  

3.        Capture the parliament or make it irrelevant. 

4.        Capture the courts through “reforms.”

5.        Upend the civil service to leave only loyalists in place.

6.        Ensure loyalists are in key “muscle” offices (prosecutor, tax enforcement, police, military, intelligence services).

7.        Harness the media as an echo chamber.

8.        Harass opposition parties and the civil sector often thru defunding them.

9.        Encourage violence (private, then public).

10.  Rewrite the election laws to stay in office.

This is how it is done.  And how it is being done in the United States of America under the Trump regime.  Which of these ten can you say are NOT already underway?

Because it is “unthinkable”, I am thinking about what makes our current crisis possible:

A lot of Americans wanted, and still want, what is happening. 

A majority of the voters voted in 2024 to elect Donald Trump, despite knowing or—more chlllingly—precisely because they did know exactly who he is and what he intended to do.  After all, they saw him function as President once before for four years.  They saw him engineer and cheer on an armed assault on the transition of power on when he lost in 2020.  And Trump’s troops offered a detailed 920-page “2025” manual spelling out exactly the shock-and-awe plan to overwhelm the structures, strictures, and safeguards of democratic government.  Crafted by 1,200 very intelligent true believers working with a $22,000,000 budget over four years, “2025” left nothing to the imagination.  But the reality was unimaginable, the possibility was unimaginable, and so we who became familiar with “2025” just couldn’t conceive of its actually happening—or the implications, if it did happen.

A lot of Americans don’t care one way or the other. 

Roughly 40% of eligible voters don’t bother to cast a ballot for President.  That’s just about the number of colonists who didn’t take a stand one way or the other during the Revolution—the great “experiment”.  This means that our Presidents are elected by little more than a quarter of the total Americans eligible to vote—half or so of 60%.  “…if you can keep it”?  If a relatively small minority can take it away, how can you keep it, anyhow?

Or to put it far more harshly but incontrovertibly:

A staggering 70% of Americans eligible to vote in 2024 were perfectly okay with letting Donald J. Trump take over America to do what everyone knew he would do—including destroying any restraints or guardrails around his power.  If more than two-thirds of Americans either voted positively to make it happen, or didn’t bother to vote to prevent it from happening, why would we persist in imagining that the Republic is anything but done for?

The Founders didn’t plan for stopping a madman from toppling the Republic. 

Whether they were starry-eyed, or naïve, or figured that we’d figure it out if and when we had to, they relied on laws to manage the worst instinct of scofflaws.  It seems not to have dawned on them that this very same scofflaw would have control over the DOJ and armed parties who might have enforced the laws he or she chose to ignore.  They seem not to have imagined a Donald Trump pressuring a state official to corrupt the vote count, bluntly taunting him: “Who’s going to stop you?”  He echoes Stalin’s purported dismissal of Churchill’s concern for papal influence: “The Pope?  How many divisions does he have?”

The hoped-for Balance of Powers relies on paper powers. 

Let’s just put it bluntly: “How many divisions does Congress have?”  “How many divisions does the Supreme Court have?”  What if the Democrats win every seat in the House and Senate, then impeach and convict Donald Trump of (whatever).  Who will usher him out of the White House?  Who would usher him into a prison if some court finds him guilty of war crimes or other plausible offenses? 

We are dumbfounded by Trump’s “unheard-of” declarations and actions, but… 

None of the most insane and egomaniacal and depraved utterances from Donald Trump are the least bit “unheard-of”.  It’s just that we have rarely heard them before.  We have certainly never heard them from a President of the United States of America.  But we and the world have heard them endlessly from the likes of Stalin and Hitler and Mao and King Leopold and Pol Pot and Genghis Khan and—well, look, I’m too ignorant to compile a good list, and it would fill thousands of volumes going back to the dawn of recorded history, and besides, they are all best summed up in the famous statement “L’état, c’est moi”—the State, it is me—that characterized the egomaniacal reign of King Louis XIV and now the mindset of Donald J. Trump.  When recently asked what limits to his power he might recognize, Donald Trump surmised, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” 

There is a difference between words that speak a lie, and words that reveal genuine insanity. 

During Trump’s first term, my favorite liberal media claimed he spoke in excess of 30,000 lies –that is, statements that were demonstrably untrue when compared with verifiable truth.  When I first heard that staggering number, it just seemed irresponsibly too large to me.  So I broke it down to days and hours, did the math, and it actually works: it’s really only two lies per hour during daylight hours for four years.  Probably a gross underestimate, really. 

But Donald Trump’s reference to his “morality” is not a lie.  You cannot make a misstatement about something that does not exist.  It is a fiction of his “own mind”.  And since this fiction is “the only thing that can stop me”, that means that nothing can stop him.  Not on the global stage, or anywhere that innocent people are living out their lives.  Forget murdering fishermen in boats on some phony pretext.  A man who stalks and finger-rapes a woman in the women’s dressing room in a department store is certifiably a psychopath.  Psychopath.  Pure and simple (although today the formal term is Antisocial Personality Disorder—ASPD).  If you doubt the specific applicability to Donald J. Trump, check out this clinical definition/description that fits him like a glove: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9657-antisocial-personality-disorder

Donald J. Trump is not stupid. 

He does many things that many consider stupid, but he is keenly shrewd, cunning, successful in worldly terms, and free from any constraints of conscience, morality, decency, civility.  We hate to admit it, but some actions he takes as President may actually be very smart—even wise.  We who despise his autocratic rule and imperial aspirations dupe ourselves into underestimating Donald Trump when mocking his innumerable missteps, misspoken names or ideas, his supposedly precarious health, his hypocrisy, his inability to speak truth, his clearly obvious mental health deficiencies.  They do not defeat his daunting ability to be destructive.

Anything is possible next. 

Already, we have seen and heard during the first year of Trump’s reign so many impossible things that we have lost the capacity to shocked.  Who could possibly have imagined that someone named Elon Musk would invade the offices of key federal agencies with a troop of teenage computer hackers, ordering career professionals out of the room while they took over their desks and copied or deleted or manipulated the records and files of millions of people and programs?  Just sit with that for a moment.  Really?  Really?!  Hard even to recall, let alone accept in retrospect.  USAID?  The most beautiful expression of our best qualities.  Incinerated, along with tons of food destined to feed starving people.  Global climate accords?  Laughed off.  In a matter of months, America’s reputation for global leadership and caring was simply obliterated.  Masked gunmen storming homes and businesses, gassing and shooting protestors, badge-toting outlaws menacing American streets and neighborhoods.

The litany of Trump’s destruction will fill history books for generations to come.  So why wouldn’t we expect more—much more—of the demolition derby to run amok for three more years, to equally inconceivable effect?  Why would we not expect more, and worse.  Too painful to believe?  Gone through the Looking Glass to live with Alice in Wonderland?

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.  “There’s no use in trying.  One can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice”, said the White Queen.  “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.  Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

How fortunate we would feel if the number were only six before breakfast, and they were just “beliefs”.  But what we are experiencing is not just uncongenial beliefs.  We are experiencing the real-life trashing of a culture and government that has striven in fits and starts to be decent.  The machinery and mindset being imposed by those with political and financial power today is palpably cruel, cowardly, ignoble, immoral, vindictive, greedy, and incompetent. 

What will stop it?  And what will happen if nothing stops does? 

Might Franklin’s potentially un-keepable Republic actually devolve into a more easily kept permanent autocracy rigged and ruled by the rich?  Might the future transfer of power become a family matter among those already holding it?  Might the 500,000,000 guns now in the hands of adult Americans become tools of a bloody civil war?  Might we need to learn how to live under conditions we choose not to imagine possible, let along probable?

What is Plan B, anyhow?  Anybody thinking about that?