Last week, on Jan. 16, two interesting things happened, one in America and the other in South Korea: America’s President Donald Trump repeated his threats to call martial law (via 1806’s “Insurrection Act”) on Minnesota and, on the same day, South Korea’s former president Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to a 5-year imprisonment by its Supreme Court for attempting to impose martial law on his country.
Perhaps president Trump should learn that calling martial law — a short-cut revolution from constitutional democracy to one-man rule — is a risky business, especially when his martial law creates its own justification. For Trump, along with canceling elections, martial law is a magic wand hard to resist. Always in favor of a straight line between two points, he has been tempted with martial law as often as Vladimir Putin of Russia with nuclear bombs. The two leaders always dream about how easy it would be if they could rule their respective nations with no oppositions to their power.
Martial law makes the president the nation’s sole ruler, comparable to the Roman emperors or the czars of Imperial Russia: Under this rule, all constitutional due processes that protect citizens (such as habeas corpus) are superseded by the president’s command. He can appoint mayors, governors, judges and whatever, without congressional consent as he rules the nation through the military tribunals he appoints. Under martial law, no political oppositions are allowed.
Although such a naked power-grabbing has never happened in American history before, given its frequent occurrences in other countries, we can imagine what can happen here in America if Trump signs the orders:
All TV and internet outlets dutifully announce that President Trump has called martial law for national security. All constitutional processes — in fact, all of the daily socio-political routines in America — are suspended. The government is now under an “Emergency Super Cabinet for National Security,” which answers only to the president. All opposition members of Congress are placed under (house) arrest, and all 50 state capitals are under the federal troops that answer directly to the president. Military tribunals, presided by hand-picked generals and colonels, court-martial all criminal trials. Military planes fly overhead and tanks and armored vehicles, with heavily armed soldiers, stand in unmistakable menace on busy street corners. Federal troops patrol the capital and other major cities, and any citizen protests are immediately crushed by soldiers and ICE agents (who no longer wear masks). With no anti-government criticisms allowed, all news media outlets repeat only government announcements, with sitcom reruns and elevator music filling gaps. Soon, Congress passes a law, with Democrats in petulant silence, suspending the Constitution and all future elections, declaring Donald J. Trump as America’s first president for life and, unanimously passing a New Hereditary Power Act, proclaims Donald Jr. as the successor in perpetuity.
New laws and executive orders would be announced in such rapid succession that the American news media (such as that remains) will not be able to catch up. Since all such decrees are activated on the president’s authority alone, like an assassin who attacks the king, he must succeed in stamping out America’s opposition completely. If he fails to do that, the opposition will come back and stamp him out. Perhaps both sides wish to avoid bullets and bloodshed, but, given Trump’s desire to hold onto power and people’s determination to hold onto tradition, their compromise is beyond possibility. Trump cannot give up his plans and “we the people” cannot allow one-man rule in America: It’s an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. One side or the other has to give in but neither side can afford to.
Needless to say, America as a nation is at a critical boiling point: Words coming out of Trump and his officials are such that it’s obvious they are backed up against the walls of unbearable tension. What goes on in Minnesota could be a spark: It could either encourage Trump — under extreme pressure not to lose everything at the midterm elections — to resort to radical decisions, such as using martial law and military control of America’s elections, or push the normally fat and lazy citizens to anti-government uprisings not seen since the American Revolution.
What would happen once Trump calls martial law and enacts the things that we saw above? We can anticipate one of two things: Trump wins, even if the victory comes at a horrific cost of civic destructions and civilian deaths in the hands of his military, and the nation will simply start Page One of Chapter One of a new history of the United States. And very certainly, America’s 250-year-old democratic tradition will never rise again.
Or Trump loses. How will this loss come about? There are two forces that can destroy Trumpism: American citizens and congressional Republicans. Let’s say, America witnesses the multiples of Renee Good, citizen protesters being massacred by the military on a horrific scale (anything over three in one incident will be considered a “massacre”). Either American citizens will rise up and charge the barricade in such a way, reminiscent of the “Boston Massacre,” that the military will have to stop obeying its commander in chief and return to their barracks. Or, the hitherto-sleeping Republican senators and representatives will finally wake up and rebel against their own leader. As they say, this is a totally uncharted territory never imagined since 1776.
Both Trumpsters and America’s resistance are facing the ultimate spectacle of self-destruction — an American Armageddon that our nation has been asleep too long to recognize or prevent. No matter which side wins, America will never be the same.
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist for the Recorder, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.