The road ahead

One of the remarkable and nearly unique features of the American government is its triune balance of power. You may think that we enjoy a similar structure here in Britain but you’d be wrong. Our so-called bicameral Parliament is a pale reflection of yours, of which our prime minister is very much a creature.

Imagine for a moment if the President of the United States had to stand before Congress once a week and answer to them, and had to run not as President but as representative of a Congressional district. Imagine if the president stayed in power exactly as long as he or she remained in charge of their party, and came and went with the fortunes of that party.

The House of Lords is nothing like America’s Senate. It’s essentially a pile of senile, rotting old corpses playing politics and waiting to die. The real power is in Parliament, where laws and policy are made and rubber stamped by the courts. The monarchy exists for the pleasure of tourists.

America has perhaps the only true safe democracy in the world that is governed by a nearly unique system of three branches separated by law. Were it otherwise, America would have surrendered to Trump fascism on or about the 20th of January, 2017, when the presidency and the Congress and the Supreme Court all belonged to Republicans. America’s laws and traditions kept it whole, in part because many Republicans still believed in the ideal of a republic.

That is no longer true, and Republicans have stopped pretending it’s true. If Republicans are ever permitted to own all three branches of government again, democracy as we have understood it for the last 247 years will cease to exist. They will seize power and never relinquish it.

Today Republicans own the courts and half the Congress and you see how bad that is. Use your imaginations a bit and imagine what it would be like if they owned the Senate and the presidency. That is why the next 3 years are crucial to America’s and the world’s survival.

By January of 2025 I believe that Democrats will own two thirds of the government, that is, both houses of Congress and the presidency. With that power the President must increase the Supreme Court to at least 13 members so that Democrats will own the other third.

At that point Democrats in power must get busy. They must pass laws and constitutional amendments making it impossible for another Trump to rise to power. Climate change will need to be baked into the Constitution as well. I am opposed to the death penalty, but if it must remain for federal crimes then its first job should be as the ultimate punishment for climate science denialism.

The NRA and corporate special interest groups must be neutered, and the only way to do that is to remove money from politics. I don’t know what all the excitement is around Bob Melendez taking bribes because, as the system exists right now, bribery is legal. It’s alive and well and being practised by lobbyists who have bought and sold every last representative in Congress. That needs to stop.

Once money is gone from government Trumpism and people attracted to it will cease to exist. Their life’s blood is money. That’s why morons like George Santos run in the first place. Santos figured, and not without good reason, that he’d enter Congress as a pauper and exit a millionaire. Had he not been discovered and criminally indicted that might have turned out to be true. And it will turn out to be true if Republicans ever seize control again.

Republicans today hold the law in contempt. Jim Jordan cynically uses the power of the subpoena — a power he openly defied — to force witnesses to attend his clown show “impeachment” hearings. Republican legislatures in red states are trying to gerrymander districts in defiance of their courts. This is a war that democracy could lose if full advantage of the coming power is not taken.

The stakes are high and the challenges difficult. The road ahead is fraught with difficulties. But it’s a work that must be done. The alternative is too terrible to contemplate. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.