What If?

I am writing and posting this to my Writing Workshop blog on the morning of October 6, the day when the US Senate is expected to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court and a month ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections. I am purposely not linking it to Facebook or Twitter, but want to document my thoughts when it is clear they are anticipatory not reactionary.

The push and pull over Kavanaugh’s appointment started out around abortion and Roe v. Wade and ended with the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony of sexual assault from high school days. Receiving less attention but perhaps even more significant are hints that Donald Trump wants Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court to protect his executive power as President and protect him from being compelled to disclose his tax returns, especially now that hints of some tax law problems in how his father’s money came to him. I have no way of sorting out the truth of these assertions and counter points, nor of knowing the inner intents of any of the actors in this volatile drama. However, I do have concerns about executive power from a different direction.

Assertions of election manipulation have tainted public confidence in the 2016 election. Republicans asserting voter fraud and Democrats outside interference, even from a foreign country. The specter of distrust of election results seems to have been amplified in anticipation of the 2018 mid-term election. My impression is that both Democrats and Republicans are waging the highest profile campaigns of any mid-term election in my memory. Both are accusing the other of shenanigans. Each seems to believe they are riding a wave of popular support and fear the other side will discredit their expected victories. Either way it goes, I anticipate loud cries of distrust in the electoral results and process.

So what happens after the election? If the Democrats gain power in either or both houses of Congress, will the administration seek some way to discredit the results, perhaps even challenging their legality? If the Republicans strengthen their hand in Congress, will there be an uprising that may even erupt in the streets? In either case, will the administration invoke unprecedented executive power to suppress chaos and maintain order? If that was to happen it would certainly be challenged in the courts. Would the Supreme Court support sweeping executive powers in a time of perceived national emergency?

I have neither a prophetic gift nor access to any relevant information to answer these questions. I do feel some anxiety that they are even rumbling around in my mind, and what I gather from the internet interaction that comes my way, others across the political spectrum are asking similar questions, some with anxiety and some with anticipation. I am old enough to remember the uncertainty that loomed as the Watergate crises closed in on Richard Nixon. Some were asking if he would impose emergency executive powers before he could be impeached. As he himself cast it, his political support collapsed and he resigned before such measures were invoked. Yet, anxiety about chaos did arise. Whether agreeing with all of the steps Gerald Ford took, or not, his calm and deliberate demeanor, rather than executive power, probably headed off a larger crisis.

Without making any prediction, I would not at all be surprised if sufficient chaos prompted some assertion of executive power. I would also not be surprised if a significant portion of the citizenry supported it, while a perhaps equally sizable voice protested it. Having friends and family across a very wide political spectrum, I am hearing/seeing a wide variety of responses to the anticipation of responses to both the Kavanaugh appointment and the mid-term elections. Some stand ready to make a high profile protest, and some suggesting they would welcome clamping down on protests with invoking emergency executive powers.

Though I find little credibility to the things arising from and swirling around the Q and QAnon phenomenon, it has captured the imagination of a few folk in my circle. There is no way to verify what Q puts out or what their followers make of it,  and it strikes me as rather foolish hopeful thinking from extreme right wing groups. Yet, I do want to comment on a scenario that seems to be congealing in that thinking because I see hints of it from other directions.

If it is true, as seems to be suggested though I find it farfetched, that a group of military leaders (generals and “patriots”) recruited Donald Trump to be their President and managed the 2016 election so he got into office, then he is the puppet of a military junta and not a free moral agent. If they are planning to impose martial law and replace the civil courts with military tribunals, that would constitute replacing an established government by military coup. If the attacks on the validity of the US Constitution (including some less extreme calls for a constitutional convention) are prelude to replacing it, that would be the gateway to totalitarian rule. I find this scenario quite incomprehensible, yet I do see/hear voices that seem sympathetic to things along this line. I don’t know which I find more disconcerting: the remote possibility that this might be real, or that some people I know think this is (or might be) a good idea. Less overt impositions of emergency executive powers in the wake of collapse of confidence in the results of the mid-term elections could head in these directions.

I am writing, not to predict any of this, but so that as our immediate future unfolds, I have documented my questions in advance. I hope this proves to be unnecessary anxiety. My perspective on history is that crises come and go. The Hebrew Prophet Habakkuk described this well. When crises come, they call forth moral leadership, such as the White Rose and the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany. They appeared to fail, but are hailed today as moral heroes. I don’t want to push the parallels too far, but only as an example of moral responses to major crises.

My biblical faith encourages me to keep my focus on God’s sovereignty. I am reminded of Psalm 11:3-4. When some ask, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The Psalmist reminds us that “The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven.” Though in somewhat different circumstances, I take encouragement from 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”