Our Republic is in jeopardy.
Right now you are thinking, Oh Really Captain Obvious?
But more than just the normal rhetoric of how a sitting President has usurped constitutional authority, this one is just the most obvious.
It has been a slow and steady slide since at least the Nixon Administration.
Our nation was built on a system of checks and balances. A Congress that was balanced between the needs of the people and the states. The power of the budget and laws were in the hands of the people.
Then they were balanced by a chief executive that enforced the laws of Congress, led the military, and was the head of state in our foreign affairs. He balanced Congress with the power of the Veto
The President was balanced by Congress with the ability to override his veto, the power of impeachment, and that only they could declare war.
Both of them were balanced by a Supreme Court, One that could void Presidential or Congressional act based on its constitutionality.
For most of the life of the Republic, that system worked. Men and Women came together for the benefit of the nation. They may have had differing ideas, but at the end of the day, they could reach an equitable compromise to benefit the nation.
Then all of that changed. An industrial world may be to blame. A generation of men that were more disposed to self-enrichment and not good of the people might as well be the culprit.
No matter the reason, the power of the Presidency became an imperial one.
Executive Orders began to replace laws of the Congress. Police Actions got around Congressional input on wars. The President began offering spoils to bribe Congress into passing budgets they desired. The threat of a shut down kept Congress in line.
Slowly the Presidency became an imperial one.
Nixon in his acts of invading Cambodia, then the Watergate Scandal. Reagan in the Air Traffic Controllers strikes, Iran-Contra, arming Afghan militants to fight the Soviet Union, and a host of others. Secret internment camps for waterboarding of suspected terrorists, and war crimes being committed in our name under the label of national security.
The PATRIOT ACT that gave the executive department the right to spy on Americans
Continuing Resolutions to circumvent the power of the purse by the House.
The list goes on and on.
Donald J Trump is not the first president to snub the law and the Constitution.
He is merely the most blatant.
And he is on track to be the last President of the United States, and the first Emperor of America.
Laughable?
It has happened before.
In the waning days of the Roman Republic, we had a Senate that was run by a few elite families. Senators made backroom deals that enriched themselves at the expense of the Republic. Ambitious men like Julius Caesar, Sula, and countless others vied for the control of the Republic.
The republic as it once was, a state that was run by the Senate and People of Rome was becoming a fond memory.
Then came Caesar. He made demands of the Senate. When the Senate had the power to recall him and keep their power, he used his legions to make the Senate back down.
Little did people know that when he crossed the Rubicon, the Roman Republic died.
They fashioned him a dictator, and upon realizing their mistake, killed him.
But the damage was done. Rome did not revert to its constitutional ways of a Senate run republic. Within a few years an ambitious man, Augustus Octavian was Caesar and the Empire was born.
It can happen here. Emperors appealed directly to the people when the Senate did not go along with them. Donald Trump tweets to the people directly when Congress opposes him.
Emperors would hire foreign assasins and use intrigue to take care of rivals. Trump is pressuring Ukraine and China to investigate his chief rival.
Emperors appointed their court officials that were loyal to no one except Caesar. Trump has filled the cabinet and key departments with “acting” officials. Officials that are not confirmed by the Senate; can be fired on a whim by the Twitter-in-Chief.
That means they are loyal only to Trump.
The Emperors understood that by keeping the Empire in conflict, you could question the loyalty of your opponents to Rome if they publicly opposed whatever war was being waged. They also distributed the lands of those vanquished by Rome to key supporters.
How many contracts in Iraq have gone to corporations that are tied to the White House? How much would these corporations make if we went to war with Iran?
The kicker is that neither Julius nor Augustus Caesar was the power behind what happened. After all, if the Republic was strong, Julius Caesar would never have dared to bring his troops across the Rubicon. A strong Republic would have gone back to its roots after his death.
But it didn’t. The people had grown used to the idea of a supreme leader. They had become complacent, and the system rotted with corruption.
That is why the Republic died.
It can happen today again. If Trump is not impeached, if his co-conspirators like Pompeo, Pence, McConnell, Guiliani, and others are not brought to justice, then Either Donald Trump or his successor will become Emperor.
By then it will be too late.
Trump is at the Rubicon. Whether or not he crosses depends on the people willing to go with another event in history:
Storming the Bastille.