The Third Term Of Donald J Trump - The Beginning Of The Inevitable Imperial Rule Of The American Presidency

For all their Sturm und Drang, the Left had nothing to show for four years of inconsequential opposition.  'How many divisions does the Pope have?' Joseph Stalin asked rhetorically at the height of his power and Soviet geopolitical strength; and the question could easily have been asked of American progressives who for a decade relied on smears, innuendoes, febrile accusations, and the use of lawfare to try to bring down Donald Trump.  

Not a howitzer in the armory, not one Army division ready to join the insurrection, not one state militia not even one squirrel-gun toting Georgia cracker to line up behind them. 

Trump, despite everything the Democrats could throw at him was back in the Oval Office, this time with overwhelming support of his aficionados and a majority of American voters.  It was the aficionados, the hard core MAGA Trumpists and their allies in the deep state that formed the nucleus of revolution.

They were no different from the early cadres of Marxist-Leninists who defied Imperial Rule, the Robespierre populist legions in France before 1787, the Fidel Castro guerillas in the Sierra Maestra.  All had inspiration, leadership, and a universal hostility to the elitist rulers which had governed them 

The so-called 'insurrection' of January 6th - a helter-skelter, ragtag bunch of frat boys come to town to do some damage - was nothing compared to what was coming.  This band of Viking-helmeted, face-painted idiots went on a a spree, a Spring Break bust-'em-up, a drunken joke. The Insurrection that got Donald Trump elected for a Third Term was serious business, four years in the planning, careful resource allocation, secrecy, and discipline.

 

Yet it was this anti-elitist resentment, this frustration with years of being patronized, shamed, and ridiculed while government took billions of their tax dollars to fund bridges to nowhere that closed the deal. It was the arrogance of the Left, their pigheaded indifference, their ignorant assumption of universal righteousness which galled the most. 

When Kamala Harris stood up before the crowd and proclaimed victory before the election had even happened, who asserted the indissoluble rightness of a black woman as Head of State, and who dismissed the working class as nothing but rubes and backwater fools, she was Marie Antoinette - the 'Let them eat cake', Queen of France who by birth, tradition, and marriage assumed the divine right of kings and the eternal legacy of the Bourbon aristocracy. 

To have to listen to this vaporous woman, this empty, presumptuous, arrogant excuse for a national leader talk down to them while promoting a godless fantasy world of queers, transgenders, and black people was anathema.  It was a painful reminder that such intellectually feeble, inconsequential, and destructive ideas still had currency and as much as they might be beaten down and stuffed into an airless cellar, they could still emerge again to see the light of day. 

Which was why, animated by frustration, rage, and resentment, Trump supporters knew that their time had come.  Winning the Presidency by electoral vote was fine and dandy for now, but given the existential nature of the moment, nothing could be left to chance. 

They cheered when the President took the first expected steps to destroy the federal bureaucracy and send boxcars full of its workers to gulags in North Dakota; yelled with delight as one government agency after another was reduced to rubble - USAID, Education, Energy, EPA, Social Welfare and more topped into piles of dust along Independence and Constitution Avenues. 

This was precisely what the President's supporters had hoped for all along - that he would make good on his promise to reduce the size of government, code words for eliminating all but Constitutional necessities.  With every whang and wallop of a wrecking ball, his troops shouted and rallied ‘round.  This was the first step, they shouted, only the first. 

It was no secret that the President admired Xi Jinping of China and the Chinese regimes since Mao Ze Dung that modernized the country, raised tens of millions of out of poverty, and created a geopolitical powerhouse in scarcely 30 years.  Xi and his revolutionary predecessor Deng Zhou Ping had always averred that freedom was defined by freedom from want and freedom of opportunity; and nothing would stand in the way of these goals.  Opposition would be tolerated only so far, but when it interfered with the engines of state and economic and social progress, it would be shut down.  The people, said Deng, come first. 

'Democracy is the worst form of government', Winston Churchill famously noted, 'except for all the rest', but history is a tale of empire, kingship, and centralized rule.  China could never have become the mighty power it is now in such a short period of time without a certain imperial autocracy.  Nor would the Palais de Versailles been built, or Notre Dame, or the Coliseum.  Democracy has had its place and has put irresponsible regimes on notice, but as an eternality? Hardly. 

The conservative thinkers providing the intellectual armature for the coming Third Term knew this well, and went out of their way to insist on what they called 'periodicity' - the temporal ups and down of the political process which would assure that the necessary modulating elements of democracy would be retained while the frilly, embroidered edges would have to go. 

The Left after the first panzer divisions had destroyed half of Constitution and Independence Avenues, could only manage a sputtering response, a usual, predictable one.  'You can't do this', they bayed at the moon. 'It is illegal. It is Unconstitutional!!' but of course it was they who were out to destroy the Supreme Court, a Constitutional arm of government because they didn't like its decisions; and it was they who used the supposedly objective and incorrigible Constitutional justice system to railroad a former President and ride him out of town on a rail. 

No, there is no such thing as settled science, and there sure as shootin' is nothing settled about the foundations of government.  Constitutions are rewritten and revised all the time.  The new Polish government after the fall of the Berlin Wall looked to include Communist idealism in their new constitution while guaranteeing free enterprise and expression.  'Right to work'? asked an American observer. 'On what foundational basis?'

The Poles could only respond with a tautology - 'because everyone has the right to work'; and only when the reality of democracy and the free market settled in did they realize that rights did not come from thin air - not God-given, as in the American document perhaps, but from somewhere you could put your finger on. 

So the Trumpists knew that a solid case could be made for challenging the Constitution.  Revising it would take too much time, what with two-thirds majority required for even the most minor revision, and the President knew that with the popular support he expected to have by the end of his second term, simply remaining in the Oval Office would be enough. There is no way that Democrats and their ‘Democracy Matters’ lawn sign supporters would somehow authorize a counter-revolutionary military coup.  

There might be considerable opposition if the Left were not such shillyshalliers in love with airy fairy ideas about gender and blackness. The very thought of this weak-kneed lot mounting any kind of a serious opposition was ludicrous.  'Just stay put, Mr. President', said his chief political advisor, 'and the Left will just go away'. 

Given the President's unheard of popularity, his party is sure to win the mid-term elections next year, and Republican majorities will be increased across the board, making elision to a third term that much easier

An Imperial Presidency? Nah, never, has been the meme since 1787; but don't jump the gun.  Nothing is certain in life, let alone political philosophy.  Watch this space.