Gregory of Tours (c. 539–594) began his sprawling “History of the Franks” with one of the most irrefragable sentences vouchsafed to humanity: “A great many things keep happening, some of them good, some of them bad.”
Just so, many things happened in 2023, some good, some bad, some, like the light emanating from a distant star, delayed in reaching us.
It seemed like just another news report when the Supreme Court of Colorado, whose declared aim was to preserve democracy, declared by a 4–3 majority that Donald Trump wouldn't be allowed to appear on the Colorado ballot.
The Colorado Republican Party appeal put a stay on that ruling, but not before other Democratic politicians climbed on to the “say-no-to-Trump” wagon.
Last week, Shenna Bellows, Secretary of State of Maine, took a page from the Colorado court.
She declared President Trump an “insurrectionist” and ordered him off the ballot in Maine.
Most observers believe that Ms. Bellows’s diktat will be overturned on appeal, which would mean that it occupies a place not in the history of politics but in the history of political theater.
But my point is that actions like these—pretending to save democracy by destroying it—have a built-in natural time delay like the light of the Sun.
That is to say, their full significance isn't obvious at once.
It will only unfold itself later when the precedents set become obvious and become, as it were, operational.
What does it mean that people of the ruling political party pretend to preserve democracy by outlawing the most potent candidate from the opposing side?
That unprecedented series of actions by a weaponized department of justice controlled by one party doesn't declare its full significance all at once.
When, for example, the FBI conducts dawn raids against ordinary citizens whom the ruling party happens to dislike, the full meaning isn't obvious in the immediate aftermath of the raids.
Similarly, when a prosecutor transforms an unarmed protest at the Capitol into an “insurrection” and then dusts off a post-Civil War era clause from the 14th Amendment to indict a candidate his masters don't like, the full significance of that unprecedented act isn't visible all at once.
No one can at this juncture say for certain what such astounding partisan assaults will portend.
Perhaps they'll help complete the transformation of democracy into that elite-run anti-democratic confect, “Our Democracy™.”
Perhaps it will be seen to have initiated the mournful eclipse of the American experiment in republican governance and individual liberty.
One thing, I believe, is more or less certain: These astounding actions to keep Donald Trump from reassuming the White House will be like the light from the Sun.
Only, they will not only be on a time delay. They will also be in the nature of a time bomb.
The people who did these things may never be called to account for their destructive actions.
Nevertheless, they'll come to rue the day they uncorked the bottle that held the genie of anti-democratic, authoritarian passion.
At the very least, they'll learn that it was much easier to release than to recontain.