Rubicon

  LOL.

As Tom Scocca was not the only one to point out, there was an actual Rubicon-crossing episode when Trump sent his irregular army of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

When Julius Caesar took a single legion, the 13th, across the river Rubicon, crossing the border just north of Rimini between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy proper, in 49 B.C.E. (a capital offense in Roman law, by the way—nobody but an elected official, consul or praetor, was allowed to command troops, i.e. to serve as an imperator, in Roman territory, and Caesar was neither; among the first things he did when he got to Rome was to have himself named dictator for the next six months by the Senate, and set himself up to be elected consul by the People as well), he launched the five-year civil war that ended with his unprecedented naming as dictator for life, and his assassination a few weeks later. It also ended, of course, with the end of the Roman Republic, which was to be transformed into an Imperium, a military autocracy, by his nephew Octavian over the coming years.

There's a tendency to use "crossing the Rubicon" as an expression of a personal story, when somebody takes a gigantic gamble (Julius supposedly said, quoting the Greek comedy writer Menander but in Latin, Alea iacta est, "The die is cast"), but it really should be noted that it was also the historical moment in which the Roman constitution was broken. 

When Donald Trump ordered his Boys to the Capitol in his Ellipse speech on January 6 (climaxing a whole series of exhortations starting December 19 with the "will be wild" tweet), to disrupt the ritual of the joint session of Congress formalizing the naming of a new president to be inaugurated on January 20, in the words supplied by Stephen Miller ("everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard"—you can recognize Miller's hand by the tell-tale meaningless alliteration), but you knew what he meant by the 20-plus uses of the verb "fight"—

The American people do not believe the corrupt, fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation. But you know, it used to be that they'd argue with me. I'd fight. So I'd fight, they'd fight, I'd fight, they'd fight. Pop pop. You'd believe me, you'd believe them.... And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

—there was little likelihood that he would succeed, as Jonathan Chait put it, in "securing an unelected second term in office", but you have to admit the ambition is pretty Caesarish even in those dry terms.

And the action, taken together with Trump's unsuccessful attempts to bring the National Guard in on his side 

Trump turned to acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and asked him if he was “set” for Jan. 6.... “You’re set for the 6th and all that and you got a plan and, you know, protect my people and all that. Right?” Milley said. “And I’m silent. I’m just listening and I’m like, hmm.”

together with his apparently successful efforts to stop the National Guard from intervening against his mob it its first hours

"Chief Sund, his voice cracking with emotion, indicated that there was a dire emergency on Capitol Hill and requested the immediate assistance of as many guardsmen as I could muster."... Walker said he "immediately" alerted Army senior leadership of the request. He was not informed of the required approval from then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller until 5:08 p.m., he said — "3 hours and 19 minutes later."

were absolutely intended to break the Constitution. That's what an "unelected second term" would have done, and that's how the sending of a paramilitary force (however disorganized and stupid) was intended. I don't see how Chait could argue otherwise, given that he accepts the premise.

While the Colorado plaintiffs and their lawyers and the judges were clearly seeking a way of taking the Rubicon-crossing back, of reversing it, of bringing the story back within the confines the Constitution lays out. The thing about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is that it's in the Constitution. The thing about Trump's behavior since the 2020 election is that it isn't.

"Tens of millions" will no doubt see restrictions on Trump's participation in the election as "a negation of democracy". But if Trump's behavior is "obviously unforgivable... and very likely criminal", as Chait says, why should we be in such a hurry to forgive him? Still more tens of millions will disagree! What about their democracy?

I forgot to move this paragraph from Thomas Zimmer into the previous post:

Democracy does not just mean elections. In widely accepted parlance today, democracy is defined, as a minimum, as a system of institutionalized popular sovereignty that plays by majoritarian rules and treats all citizens as equals. An election outcome that undermines that system – because it empowers forces that are explicitly vowing to install minority dominance via autocratic rule, for instance – is therefore very much not good for democracy. These are not hypothetical scenarios: Many autocrats got to power by legal, democratic and/or constitutional means and then set out to transform the system into something that was no longer democratic. Think Victor Orbán in Hungary today, as an example.

Our Constitution makes an extraordinary effort to protect the rights of minorities, by which the original document (along with The Federalist correspondence and so forth) largely means political minorities, not the racial or sexual or religious minorities whose rights are so often rightly seen as being threatened today, unrecognized until the 14th Amendment after the Civil War and abolition. Just the jerks who lose elections!

It's crazy to treat the Republican minority with so much respect that they stand a chance of overthrowing the constitutional dispensation we have.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.