Sine Die

[su_spoiler title=”Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise. ” open=”yes” style=”fancy” icon=”arrow-circle-1″]

Paul Edwards

The American government is approaching a month of shutdown.  The Latin phrase for indefinite adjournment of a legislative body is Sine Die, meaning that there is no specified day of reassembly.

The Congress is a public body by which the “people’s business” is carried on legally and fiscally.  It makes laws and appropriates money that enables agencies of government to function, and is uniquely so empowered.  It must provide in advance for the state to continue operating through its normal recesses.

The pathetic Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, trying to answer the usual questions.

A shutdown occurs when the Congress is unable to come to agreement on, and pass, an essential funding bill.

[su_note note_color=”#ebf1f7″ radius=”17″]Legislatures were created to represent the people in eras when all government was autocratic, and were only established after fierce struggles against tyrannical power.  These battles were repeated in many kingdoms and empires and, when successful, created bodies that acted as a counterweight against royal will.[/su_note]

In Europe, the lead was taken by the nobility of England against  the Plantagenet King John which forced him to sign a charter of rights, the Magna Carta.  Modifications were made over time that further limited the absolute power of Kings, and which ultimately vested most of the means of taxation—the source of operating money for the state—entirely under the control of Parliament.

Kings resisted curtailment of their prerogatives—supposedly divinely granted—and acrimony between King and Parliament came to a head under the Stuart King, Charles I, with members refusing his demands for money for use at his sole discretion.

Charles I reacted by proroguing that body—dismissing it—and tried to govern without it, attempting to raise the funds it denied him by coercion, with little success.  He called and dismissed several Parliaments that balked his will, and his relations with it deteriorated drastically and irremediably.

The saga, which intensified bitterly for a decade, ended with the execution of Charles I, done without solid legal precedent or authority, simply because an outraged Parliament decreed it.

Governments of the present day, in all but rare cases, have little in common with those of the end of the era of absolutism.  There is now no question of where authority for all legislation resides. 

How does Charles I’s story bear on our shutdown?  In a couple of key elements.  The same issue—insistence of a head of state on getting what he wants—is at the core of both.  Trump wants his absurdly named “Big Beautiful Bill”—titled like a baby book—passed and in his petulance has, in effect, prorogued Congress.

It is hard to mourn that act, since Congress has done nothing for the people for decades and is a dirty joke, but it is all that stands between us and absolutism.  Most of what government does so inadequately for people cannot be done at all without Congress acting.  It must fund government or much of it stops working.

Charles called Parliament into session, and prorogued it several times when it refused to fund him, until it passed a law forbidding him to do it again.   He fought them harder, and was executed.  

Trump refuses to compromise on his bill and can do so because he controls much of the guts of government, through previously made appropriations and existing pots of money.  One billionaire crony anted up $130 million for him to cover military salaries.

Trump can run many departments and agencies as Presidential fiefs and avoid the oversight Congress might exercise in session, and so he prolongs the shutdown.  He can do what Charles I could never manage: to run government by himself, for a time.

[su_pullquote align=”left”]“It is hard to mourn that act, since Congress has done nothing for the people for decades and is a dirty joke, but it is all that stands between us and absolutism…”[/su_pullquote]

His other advantage is that half the Congress supports him while nearly all of Parliament adamantly opposed Charles I.  Those hoping for a like outcome in Trump’s case will be disappointed.

Another significant echo is that in the long history of a Republic in which separation of powers and democratic operation has only been once interrupted by Civil War, Trump is trying to subvert that system in favor of one that is autocratic and absolutist.

His obvious intent—to dismantle and reconfigure our mode of governance—gives a far graver, more foreboding character to this shutdown than others.  It raises the stakes on a mere fight over money, making it a battle for the future of the nation.

It would be grand to see Trump’s efforts to undo and destroy our prevailing system fail utterly, if it had any integrity, or served the vital interests and well-being of American citizens, but it does not.  The people will gain nothing, whichever side prevails.  

America, under the brute, unprincipled Capitalism both parties champion, has no future, or rather, has only one of continuation of a system so diseased and moribund that it will ultimately result in catastrophe and dissolution for the nation.

Americans have always been a people of naive good faith and optimism and, regrettably, that has been their downfall.  Their childlike eagerness to put the best possible face on what occurs has allowed them to be unremittingly deceived by venal and unprincipled men serving a Capitalist cabal that has taken all our bounty and given us endless war, mass poverty, and ill health.

The shutdown will end, by one means or another, but the awful circumstances that caused it will only intensify.  Trump will not be beheaded—which many will think a pity—and will instead be followed by another of his ilk, as Charles II followed Charles I. 

The likely autocratic future of America…unless. {Charles II, c1676 by John Michael Wright}

BEFORE you leave, PLEASE pay attention to this alert.
[t4b-ticker id=”1″]

[/su_spoiler]

Print this article [bws_pdfprint display=’print’]

[su_note note_color=”#f1efef” radius=”0″]The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post, although, if we publish them, we obviously find them noteworthy and valuable. [/su_note]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License • 
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS