Ever since Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, culminating in the attack on the US Capitol, I’ve encouraged readers to view the former and now current president as engaging in insurrection against the United States. It wasn’t just the violence of January 6 that made this term click for me, though that was part of it. Rather, it was the sudden clarity that Trump was bent on overthrowing our democracy and the rule of law by whatever means necessary, and putting himself in power as a strongman or dictator figure.
Though it may seem counter-intuitive, Donald Trump resumed his insurrection shortly after being sworn in as our 47th president, first by pardoning those who tried to cancel an election by force four years ago. Through the pardons, Trump validated his previous efforts to overthrow an election, and with it, American democracy; he also signaled that he would protect those who engaged in violence on his behalf going forward, indicating a view of power incompatible with a chief executive bound by the rule of law and popular will. By arming himself with the tools of a dictator right out the gate, Trump openly resumed his attempt to overthrow our democratic form of government. Being president wasn’t enough for him; he wanted to rule without restraint.
In the last day or so, he’s committed another insurrectionary act by freezing the spending of possibly trillions of dollars authorized by Congress. The Ink has a great rundown of what’s happened and why Trump’s actions are illegal, and makes the case that usurpation of the Congress’s power to authorize spending is great enough to constitute a coup attempt by placing extreme and unconstitutional power in the president’s hands. Trump is trying to make his own laws rather than working with Congress to pass new ones; claiming he alone can direct spending, Trump is trying to elevate the presidency into a supreme power center. The Ink calls it a coup, but we can easily substitute my preferred term of “insurrection” in its place.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it because it’s foundational to the crisis we find ourselves in: Donald Trump is a sociopathic and violent man who, through his words and actions, has declared himself to be an open enemy of the United States. He channels not only his own sick lust for dominance, but the reactionary intent and backing of significant segments of American society, including Christian and white nationalists and the ultra-wealthy, who see democracy as an obstacle to power, essential freedoms as objectionable, and the right to dominate as their destiny. Yet a sort of repression of these basic facts has taken hold of the media and even large swathes of the Democratic party, so that when Trump does something that is obviously intended to destroy our government — such as rewriting the balance of power between the Congress and the president so that the former gets nothing and the latter everything — it is framed as Trump “shaking up” Washington, as “delivering on his campaign promises.”
Everything that has happened over the past week was utterly predictable, yet too many prefer to behave as if what is happening is not actually what it appears to be. But it is. Donald Trump wants to rule like a dictator, and the GOP is along for the ride, hoping to leverage his destruction and eventual passing from the scene into permanent one-party rule. I never dreamed that the U.S. would experience an insurrection in my lifetime, much less that so many would pretend it wasn’t even happening. Yet as Trump’s illegal acts of budgetary buccaneering start to cause real pain and suffering, this mass sleepwalking may yet start to pass, as more people begin to see and feel the tangible effects of lawless rule.