Musings On The Way Down

In order to become the American president, a man must not merely win an election but must ultimately swear an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” In order to swear an oath in a morally or legally binding way, a man must have the capacity, both intellectual and linguistic, to understand the terms entailed by that oath. For example, in order to swear an oath to “tell the truth” in court, one must understand what telling the truth means, as well as understanding what it means to promise to do so. Does this not mean, in the case of the presidential oath, that the oath-taker must have a working understanding of the essential concepts, as well as the overriding spirit, of the Constitution which he swears to preserve, protect, and defend?

Here are a few of the key terms related to the contents of the U.S. Constitution that, I submit, Donald Trump does not understand whatsoever and certainly could not, if asked to do so, outline in even a very rough manner:

• limited government
• separation of powers
• equal branches
• due process
• the rule of law
• legislative powers
• “The Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises”

I conclude that Donald Trump’s swearing of the presidential oath was invalid, since he swore the oath in the effective condition of a person who did not understand what he was swearing to do, conceptually or linguistically. This, I believe, makes him ineligible and illegitimate as president, which, given that he has been allowed to occupy that position for the past few months on false pretenses, could be grounds for immediate impeachment and removal. 

Of course, one could dispute my characterization of his ignorance of the meaning of the key constitutional terms, above, although I sincerely doubt that anyone in all honesty could even imagine Trump trying to explicate any of those terms with an iota of coherence. Nevertheless, if you do dispute my hypothesis, and choose to maintain that Trump actually did understand the meaning and sense of the above terms when he swore the presidential oath, then I am willing to grant this, as long as you are also willing to grant, based on daily events, that Trump, who on your assumption did and does understand those concepts, is acting in knowing and intentional defiance of them, which is to say that he is ruling (not governing, strictly speaking, but ruling) in deliberate violation of the fundamental law of the United States.

The entire defense of Trump’s presidency, at least from anyone who is not an authoritarian dreamer, seems to be something along the lines of, “At least he is doing something to shrink the size of government.” Quite the contrary. Since the entire purpose of the constitutional separation of powers, and particularly the inherent carefully defined restrictions on the executive branch, was to limit the sudden or gradual accumulation of excessive power that is typically found in non-republican governments, by setting up mutually-thwarting forces within the American system, Trump’s brazen and unbridled assertions of authority far beyond the bounds of the presidential purview, along with his explicit flouting and public rallying against any powers, actions, or judgments of the other two equal branches which he happens not to like, is surely having the effect of greatly expanding real government power, not least by undermining public belief in, and therefore weakening practical acceptance of, the defining principle of limited republican government which was designed to be America’s surest bulwark against devolution into demagoguery and tyranny.

If Donald Trump is not making the U.S. government larger, in the only sense that ultimately matters, namely by expanding the arbitrariness (i.e., lawlessness) of its authority and influence over people’s lives, then I don’t know who could. The surprise for some, I suppose, and thus the source of their seemingly endless capacity for denial, is that this final collapse into authoritarianism in America should come not under the subtle sway of an evil genius — although God knows many such men have paved the way to this precipice — but under the haphazard vanity project of a malignant and frightened ignoramus.