Today is Friday and it was just two days ago that Donald Trump encouraged people to invade the halls of Congress. Joe Biden said while the onslaught of Congress was taking place that a President’s words mattered for good or for ill and so he asked President Trump to tell the rioters in Congress to cease their activities. Some hours later, Trump said that they should go home even though he loved those people who were engaged in the violence, which was clearly a half-hearted condemnation of violence. The intruders did not achieve their objective to delay very long the certification of the Electoral College vote because the Congress reconvened and met through the night to finish the task. Joe Biden, who is not an eloquent man, did offer a word that had resonance during his remarks. He said that what happened in Congress was an “insurrection”. (Sen. Mitt Romney used the same term, as did Sen. Chuck Schumer, in very short order, and the term has now been used by many others.) The events at the Capital were not just a riot or a disturbance, but an insurrection, and we should think what that term means.
An insurrection is an attempt to overthrow the government of a nation, one called an insurrection rather than a rebellion because the effort is not very well mounted and so bound to sputter and end in quick order. John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859 was an insurrection. It was just a very few abolitionists who desired to start a slave uprising but one which lasted for only 36 hours and with seven dead and Brown was hanged. “Nat Turner’s Rebellion”, as it was called, was an insurrection in 1831 and also in Virginia. It killed between 55 and 65 people but lasted only for a few days, but the idea of a slave rebellion remained as a fear in the hearts of slaveholders. That is very different from a demonstration, such as those who faced off against the Chicago police department in Chicago in 1968 or the demonstrators at the Pentagon during the Vietnam War who claimed that they had “surrounded” the building and that they were “levitating” it. Their dramatic actions might hope to galvanize the American people to see an alternative way but there would be other methods, such as a legitimately replaced government, while the insurrectionists on Wednesday were out to prevent the legitimate Congress from doing what it might legitimately do. That it was put down during the course of an afternoon and evening does not prevent it from being very serious, and so even some of the Congress members who had supported the dispute in the Congress backed off when the Congress reconvened. This was a step too far, and one which led Trump White House and Cabinet officials, including ex-Attorney General Barr, to say it was unacceptable and for some to resign their offices.
I was a bit puzzled by the response of Congresspeople who suddenly condemned rioting when they had applauded gumming the works of the Congress. I had applied the word “insurrection” to those who planned to object to the Congressional proceedings even though they had not yet engaged in violence. These were, the twelve Senators and most of the 130 in the House, planning to object even though they did not believe, according to reports, that there was any basis on which to contest the proceedings but were doing so anyway so as to appease the President and so to make some noise in further of Presidential and other ambitions in two or four years from now. So they were steamrolling Congress without regard to legality, assuming it would all pass over, the rituals confirmed but the benefits of obstructionism to last. But steamrolling is also an insurrection because people are acting in clear violation of the law, while under color of law, but hypocritical in that they knew better that they were thwarting the law. That is a non-violent insurrection that took place when Hitler was given extraordinary measures, to rule on his own, after the Reichstag Fire in 1933. But there is no need to quibble about the terms because a real life rioting that was an insurrection really did take place, perpetrated so as to unseat a duly elected President.
Conservatives are unlikely to back the looser version of insurrection even if they object to the later violent one on the grounds that people can exercise their views as they please, and it is very difficult to decide who is hypocritical and who is not, and also because of the position of the President who becomes problematic because he has aided and abetted those who further either the non-violent insurrection, which is to overturn an election without sufficient grounds, as that is indicated by the fact that no state or federal court has held any significant irregularities in the vote, however Ted Cruz says that suspicion alone, without justification, is enough to present his proposal that there convene a Presidential Commision of the sort that happened in the Hayes Tilden election of 1876. In that case, every Presidential election would require a Presidential Commission. Cruz is a cool customer to argue without even a pretense of irregularities, as might be indicated by a white paper spelling out the gravity of the grievances against the fairness of the election, that there were legitimate grievances about the election. That is reason enough, the absence of a white paper, to think those questioning the Congress were hypocrites and insurrection fomenters rather than people of good conscience going through a procedural rigermorole. The procedure was just a roadblock in Congress doing its duty. Cromwell proroguing the Long Parliament was also an insurrection that became a successful rebellion, its military intimidating the members of parliament while the American congress people were to be intimidated by the combination of heartfelt and feigned anger to overthrow an election. There are some Republican congresspeople who are so bemused and ignorant that they believe what they think they should think, but Ted Cruz, who knows better, abetted the insurrection anyway.
So what is to be done with Trump himself, the ringleader in chief of the insurrection? He is clearly culpable because he had asked his people to storm Congress and that afterwards he just told them to go home while praising them and their cause. One usual way of letting Trump get away from things is his remarkable lack of verbal precision and a tone whereby he only half means what he says. It is what I call the stupidity defense. Trump is so deficient that you can’t hold him responsible for what he says or does because he doesn’t understand either. I would say that a President who doesn’t think he is up to the job shouldn’t run for office. George W. Bush shouldn’t have run but he had supposedly able people to run the government and was then bemused that what Chaney and Rumsfeld had wrought did not turn out very well. Still, W. is responsible, and so is Trump.
There is another term that has become popular especially on Thursday, the day after the insurrection. It is the idea of “mental illness”, something which many people, both knowingly and informally about mental illness, have said about Trump for years. Both Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, as have other politicians and congresspeople, call for removing the President through the Twenty Fifth Amendment, which allows for a council of cabinet officials convened by the Vice President, to dismiss an incumbent President because of his inability to perform the office of President. This would be a fast way of getting rid of Trump so as to preclude him doing something dangerous in the next week and a half. People say Trump has deteriorated mentally and is unstable as to his judgment. But the Twenty Fifth Amendment was drawn up to deal with problems such as happened with Woodrow Wilson, who was physically incapacitated or something similar to a health condition, as might have happened if a wounded President had lingered for a long time, as had been the question with James Garfield. The cabinet officials would be chosen so as to make the removal of the President not done for a political one but for a health issue, and so would classify “mental illness” as something real rather than an excuse for getting rid of him politically. Well, whatever are the President’s mental deficiencies, he does have a point of view that has not changed since he became President, even if some people say otherwise. The people elected his racism, his suspicions, his white nationalism, his rhetoric, and suddenly you recognize that he is insane? Moreover, what he did to encourage people to engage in insurrection was a political act, however heinous, and so requires the Congress to take a political act, which in this case would be an impeachment and a conviction, though it is very hard to do that in quick time. Meanwhile, Pelosi and Schumer have moved on an impeachment rather than removing Trump for his incapacity, knowing it won’t take place before Biden is innaugurated, just so, I presume, that the record makes clear that Trump deserved to be impeached and convicted, and that he is forever chastised as being someone who was impeached twice rather than “only” once.
It is clearer today, on Friday, that Mike Pence is not willing to convene that council, but that Pence has been down with the White House and, I presume, telling Trump that he is on a very short lease, as is indicated by the fact that Trump said afterwards that there will be a peaceful transition of power even though he will not attend the Biden Inauguration-- to which Biden added that he was glad Trump was not attending but that he would be glad to have Pence present in the inauguration ceremonies. I was also relieved by having Colin Powell and others also say that let Trump just last out his days, which suggests that they are not concerned that Trump will engage in a last ditch attempt at military adventurism, both the nuclear arsenal and military forces insulated from any Trump action. Maybe someone outside of and close to the Oval Office will sit there and make sure that Trump can’t call the Defense Department and order something awful to do, and that the Defense Department will simply refuse to do something outrageous. Responsible Republicans will be patriotic even if they are cutting corners when they do not follow the orders of a President, but these are the circumstances in which we have all been put.The formality of preserving the last days of a soon to be ended Presidency will remain legitimate even if his people have to put Trump in a straightjacket.