OPINION: The Delaware, Potomac, and Rubicon
Ryan Montgomery, Staff Writer
The rise and fall of the two great republics of history can be traced to the tales of two rivers. The American and Roman Republics, and the Delaware and Rubicon Rivers. One, the triumphant rise of a great democracy, and the other, its despotic fall.
In American history, crossing the Delaware River was a legendary moment synonymous with bravery. General Washington, needing to attack the numerically superior British allied forces during the Revolutionary War, crossed the icy Delaware River to ambush the enemy and win a resounding victory.
In Roman history, crossing the Rubicon is a term meaning “passing a point of no return.” In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar—seeking to prevent the Senate from charging him with crimes of warmongering and aggression—marched his army across the border of the Roman province of Italy, the Rubicon River.
Caesar then did the unthinkable and marched his army on the City of Rome, declaring himself its dictator, and began a bloody civil war driven by his own ambition.
Much of the same can be said of President Donald Trump’s recent decisions to order the National Guard to several American cities: first testing the waters in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., then later Memphis, Chicago, Portland, and San Francisco.
The idea of the National Guard is just about as old as the idea of America itself. The founding fathers, perpetually afraid of all things kingly and authoritarian, hesitated over the power that a perpetual standing army could have on a democratic government.
For this reason, they favoured citizens’ militias, a type of army made up of citizens who would only be enlisted in times of war and during peacetime would be normal civilians like anyone else.
Members of the National Guard hold civilian jobs when they aren’t directly called up for duty. How American to call up the nation’s Uber drivers and accountants to arrest homeless Washingtonians on their days off.
The National Guard is unique in that its command is jointly held between the president and the governor of their respective state. Only in recent times has the National Guard been exclusively used by state governors. In the past, they were deployed to respond to national disasters or mass civil disturbances.
Historically, presidents have also deployed them to enforce federal law. Such as in 1957 when President Dwight Eisenhower used the Arkansas National Guard to enforce the desegregation of schools in Little Rock and protect a group of black school children attending a white school, known as the Little Rock Nine.
Leave it to the president who led the allies on D-Day to mobilise federal troops for a noble cause, and leave it to the president who was a reality TV star to do the same for his own vanity.
Trump has since sent them to Portland, Oregon, has threatened to send them to Chicago, and is now musing about moseying them down to San Francisco. I’ll ask the reader if they can see common denominators between these vast and varied cities. They’re all Democrat ran.
Furthermore, Trump isn’t using the local National Guard in their own states; he’s exporting National Guard soldiers from Texas across the country. In other words, Republican soldiers in Democratic cities.
Justifying his occupation of Portland, the president said the city was “a warzone” after protests began outside of an ICE detention facility in the city. Portland being a warzone could only be the case if hippies and stoners with dreadlocks are considered enemy combatants, in which case the Canadian Federal Government should occupy Tofino immediately.
Trump blamed these protests on the antifascist group Antifa, which he recently declared a terrorist organisation, an inane statement as Antifa isn’t an organisation, but a decentralised political movement. Go ahead, try and join, and get back to me with how far you got.
Furthermore, if you are against the people who are anti-fascist, what side does that put you on? Questions I’m sure the president hasn’t put a lick of thought into.
So far, the only ones with any ability to stand in Trump’s way are federal judges who can order injunctions on the mobilisations and halt them for a little while. This is exactly what has happened to his incursions into Portland and Chicago, which Trump saw as a disappointment, according to a Politico article.
Legal officials shouldn’t be able to tell him what to do—he’s the president. His word should be the law. This is only reasonable. It’s for this reason that Trump has been flirting with the idea of enacting the Insurrection Act, which is a piece of legislation from 1807 that, in drastic situations of mass insurrection or armed rebellion, gives the president the power to mobilize the U.S. Army to maintain order, and there’s nothing judges can do about it.
What happened to the rowdy colonists who dumped King George’s tea in Boston Harbour? What happened to the chutzpah-filled soldiers of Washington? Those United States who declared independence from the largest empire in the world over such a petty issue as taxation.
The same country now allows its president to march troops through its capital like a prince playing with his toy soldiers. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
To swing back to this article’s titular river analogy: perhaps it may be a bit clichéd if not alarmist, to compare Trump to Caesar, a man whose name is effectively interchangeable with that of ‘wannabe dictator.’
But to that I say—journalistic integrity taken into account—when can we call a spade a spade? The American president using military soldiers to enforce his will upon a populace that politically disagrees with him is a step too far. A Rubicon that cannot be uncrossed.
If the Americans value their republic, then they had better wise up quickly and stop Caesar before he gets his feet wet.
