by W.D. Ehrhart
In a famous scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” King Arthur explains to a peasant named Dennis that he became king after the Lady in the Lake gave him Excalibur. Dennis replies, “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.”
I’ve thought a lot about that scene over the years since I first saw it in 1975. Since then, this nation has been governed by a president who was elected by the voters of a single congressional district in Michigan, a president who used to peddle Chesterfield cigarettes as great Christmas gifts and played second fiddle to a chimpanzee named Bonzo, a president who told people to read his lips, a president who got blowjobs from a White House intern in the White House, a president who initiated not one but two unwinnable wars, a president who insisted “Yes We Can” but didn’t, a president whose greatest success was as a television “reality” star, a president who stuck around long enough to reveal his fading mental capacity on national television, and now—once again, like a recurring nightmare—Trumpty Dumpty, Trumpasaurus, the MAGAMobster.
Indeed, whatever once was able to pass itself off as American “democracy” has steadily deteriorated over the course of my lifetime to the sorry situation we have today: a burgeoning fascist dictatorship run by utterly incompetent sycophants like Pete (“So I like to drink, so what?”) Hegseth, Kristi (“I shot my dog, and I’m proud of it”) Noem, and Robert F. (“What’s wrong with leaving a dead bear carcass in Central Park?”) Kennedy, Jr., for the benefit of American oligarchs like Elon (“Just passing through on my way to Mars”) Musk, Jeff (“Endorse a Black Woman? You’re kidding, right?”) Bezos, and Mark (“We don’t need no stinkin’ fact-checking anyway”) Zuckerberg.
Meanwhile, our Supreme Court—from whose decisions there is no appeal—is now stacked with right-wing activists who believe that free speech is free only to those who have enough money to buy it, women’s bodies belong to men in black robes, and presidents—especially the one who appointed them—are immune to criminal prosecution. And over the next four years, that grotesque court imbalance is likely to get even worse.
At the state and local levels, the situation is hardly any better. Here in my home state of Pennsylvania, my fellow citizens just elected to the U.S. Senate a billionaire carpetbagger who lives in Connecticut and made many of his billions investing in Chinese firms that supply and strengthen the Chinese military.
The corrupting influence of money in politics is nothing new, but attempts to curb that influence in the course of my lifetime have been completely eliminated. Thanks to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and related court decisions, any and all restrictions on election spending are gone, and thanks to what is called “Dark Money,” donors can give unlimited amounts of cash without even having to report it or say who they’ve given it to.
And the sad truth is that we have come to this sorry state of affairs through the very system and mechanisms we Americans have always considered sacrosanct and foolproof protection against tyranny: the Constitution, that founding document with its separation of powers between three branches of government, and that sets forth the obligations and duties of each of those branches, and incorporating our Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments that contain most of what we think makes us uniquely American.
But what has unfolded over the course of my lifetime, and with dizzyingly accelerating speed in the past decade, has in fact all been perfectly legal. Take for instance, Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow Barack Obama to nominate a Supreme Court candidate during the last year of his presidency only to allow #45 to appoint one weeks before his election defeat in 2020? Both actions were perfectly legal by the rules set by a Congress elected by the people.
Or how about the filibuster in the U.S. Senate that made it nearly impossible for Obama or Biden to get anything through Congress without making often terrible concessions to obstructionist politicians? Or the two impeachments of #45 that stood zero chance of conviction because of partisan party politics? All perfectly legal under our system of government.
I have frequently heard all sorts of people proclaiming that this action or that action of #47 is “unconstitutional,” but once again, the truth is that only the Supreme Court can ultimately determine what is or is not constitutional, and given the track record of today’s sitting court, I very much doubt these “Justices” are going to rule that anything the Emperor Trump does is going to be deemed unconstitutional.
I wonder how many people realize that Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and Adolph Hitler all came to power legally, using the mechanisms available to them at the time each came to power. Donald Trump has now done the same thing.
We know, of course, that once Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler came to power legally, each proceeded to take control of the systems that had abetted them, twisting and distorting what was considered legal until the very concept of legality became a caricature.
We don’t know what the Orange Cheeto will do over the next four years, but I have a bad feeling that it isn’t going to be good for anyone but the sycophants and the oligarchs, and maybe even the sycophants will come to realize they’ve been kissing the wrong ass.
And this brings me back to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Could we really be doing any worse if our government and its various members were chosen by “some watery tart” throwing swords at them? Given where we find ourselves today, I’m certainly ready to give it a try.
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W.D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.