Essays in Idleness

I took the week off in a location remote from Vallis Hortensis, hoping to forget about the politics that had fragmented my attention recently, but upon my return to the High Doganate, I looked in the Internet again. My anger was restored. I can imagine many million Americans are very angry, too, though millions more exhibit smug satisfaction. The incident of course was the conviction of President Trump, on all 34 counts of invented felonies, by a kangaroo court in the rogue district of Manhattan, operating on instructions that came down from the White House.

The conviction will of course be overturned at the first appeal, but Trump will be called a “convicted felon” in Democratic talking points. This, and stuffing ballot boxes, is their only way to win. Worse, Republican hacks will assuredly take revenge at their first chance. President Biden, who is even more corrupt than he is senile, can be tried for innumerable crimes, along with all senior congressional members of his party.

This will be unwise, however. It makes the United States unambiguously a “Banana Republic,” in which politicians retire only at death. They will cheat and brazen to avoid passing out of power and into the hands of their enemies. Peaceful transitions are impossible, in the chaos of public unlawfulness. This is, as I have argued in these Idleposts before, how all democracies have ended. A fourth American Civil War (1775–83; 1812–15; 1861–65; 2024–?) seems inevitable unless some angelic agency intervenes.

The United States was not a Democracy, in conception. It was founded explicitly as a Republic, under the Rule of Law, and Our Lord. “In God We Trust.” Voting was carefully tamed: basic rights could not be overturned by legislation. But agnostic rule, by the manipulation of laws, is dear to the heart of every progressive — and sadly, the USA is a full democracy now.