American Tragedy

Donald Trump should be nowhere near the powers of the presidency. He has shown America this over and over. To say he is morally unfit to lead the nation is an understatement at best. He is a criminal, one who has been: indicted by the US government for subverting an election and retaining classified documents, convicted for violating New York law, and found liable for sexual assault. As president, he was impeached – twice – for abusing the office he inhabited. Yet, Donald Trump is going to assume the expansive powers of the presidency, again. Aside from being downright dangerous, it is also a profound tragedy, one which will haunt America and have lasting consequences for its vulnerable democracy. 

This was a tragedy which could have been stopped at multiple points, by countless American institutions. None more so than the Republican party, a party that for nearly a decade gave Trump unfettered access to a national platform. It did so through thick and thin, as Trump purged the party of free thinkers and castigated its members. For years, without batting an eyelid, the party allowed Trump to cross red lines no other politician could cross. The most notable of these being January 6th, when Trump, stripped of power by the people, directed supporters to end the democratic transfer of power occurring on Capitol Hill. 

It is a dereliction of duty beyond comparison that the Republican party couldn’t stand up to Trump as he violated the constitution in such dramatic and repeated fashion. Instead, the party – in its entirety – collapsed in on itself under the weight of its admiration for Trump. Its final act, acquiescing to a man who could not concede an election, sealed the party’s fate as Donald Trump’s enabler – and Trump ran with it, casting out the few still bound to the constitution, further reducing the party of Abraham Lincoln to a most farcical tragedy.

Yet, the Republican party was far from alone in clearing the way for Trump’s return to power. Other institutions and individuals within the political system also failed, systematically, just as they should have swung into action to halt Trump’s rise. Tragically, these institutions were the very ones tasked with dispensing the law and adjudicating the rules by which democratic actors, including Trump, are supposed to play by. 

As Republicans failed to convict a man who incited an insurrection, the Justice Department could have moved hell and high water to prosecute Trump for the crimes he levelled against American democracy and its millions of voters. Yet, Merrick Garland – a man charged with dispensing the law equally without fear or favour – failed the nation. 

Upon assuming office, it was clear Garland, and the institution he had at his disposal, should have executed the letter of the law and indicted Trump for attempting to end a democratic transfer of power (a crime that was executed in full view of America). After all, the department consumed itself with prosecuting and convicting the rest of America that engaged in Trump’s insurrection with vigour. Yet, Garland showed a galling indifference in refusing to go after the man who was by every account the mastermind of a plot against democracy. 

In the end, it took Garland two long years before he even appointed a special council, Jack Smith, by which point it was too late and the clock had already run out. This deep apathy, for swiftly marshalling the law against Trump, for breaches of law so fundamental, only further cemented Trump’s second appropriation of his party, and then the storming of the presidency.

While the Justice Department may have shown indifference, the courts walked a different – more unsettling – path, aiding and abetting Trump at every turn. When institutions did move against Trump and his anti-democratic actions, the judges threw justice to the side and endlessly slow-walked the legal cases that would decide Trump’s future and fortunes. In the district and federal courts, judges twisted and reinvented the plain meaning of words and statutes to frustrate justice.

Later on, having had enough of delaying proceedings, the Supreme Court sought to swiftly neuter the constitution in Trump’s favour. This was abundantly clear when Colorado’s Supreme Court removed Trump from the primary ballot, applying the letter of the law to punish those unable to engage in the democratic norm of transferring power peacefully. The Court quickly reversed this course of accountability, striking down the measure and gutting the constitution of its clear meaning. 

The Supreme Court didn’t stop there and, in one fell swoop, took a sledgehammer to the constitution it was designed to uphold with Trump v. United States. Its judgement not only let Trump off the hook right before the election, but it also fundamentally rewrote the entire constitutional balance in his favour. After months of dithering and delaying by the nation’s highest court, this was the final nail in the coffin; Trump’s rehabilitation was all but complete. In aiding and abetting Trump before the election, the Court became his future enabler, completing the annihilation of a system of rules and laws that were written into the constitution to hold America’s rulers accountable.

Each failure, unfathomable in its own way, cemented a wider American tragedy. It was a tragedy in which American institutions were unable, unwilling or outright opposed to dispensing justice on a man who attacked the foundational vision of the country and its constitution. The party has collapsed under its acquiescence to a man and his stated self-interest, and future bulwarks against a man unfit for elected office were erased from the constitution. These were all organisations and individuals charged with preventing the rise of a man totally and morally unfit to inhabit the presidency. They failed one after the other to enforce the rules of the game, together allowing the rise of a man who should never have been able to run for president, let alone reclaim the office. 

Image: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

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