Come Senators, Congresspeople, Please Heed The Call

Of course this begs the question, “what call?” One answer could be the call of the oath or affirmation you made when you took office as a congressperson.

For a small — much too small — number of you in Congress, that call is leading you to stand up and speak up and act courageously to stop the coup currently in progress against the lawful government of the USA, including against the Congress of the United States.

For far too many of you in Congress, that call is faint, barely heard above the chaos being generated hourly by the would-be tyrants and their minions; barely heard above the voices of your own fears or doubts or disbelief or shock or denial or any combination of those and more.

For a specific and dangerously large number of you in Congress, that call has been equated with saying “it became necessary to destroy the Constitution to save it.”

This is the ever-present problem of subjectivity of human interpretation. Your oath or affirmation as a congressperson means to you only what it means to you. As a call to heed that might put you and your colleagues all in the same hand-basket, it is not much use.

There is another call, quite a different one, that you may not be hearing. Perhaps you have never heard it. This call invites you to heed — to consider — the consequences of your actions, beyond your personal beliefs, dogmas, imaginings, fantasies, and expectations. Because consequences care nothing about your personal beliefs, dogmas, imaginings, fantasies, expectations, or anything else. They will be what they will be, whether you like them or not. And they will accrue to you, whether you want them or not.

It’s a given that if the coup succeeds, you few courageous congresspeople boldly standing up and speaking out and acting on your oath or affirmation to defend the constitution will suffer for your resistance. You will be punished — probably brutally, because this coup is led by people who behave brutally, aided and abetted by followers who behave brutally — including a non-trivial percentage of congresspeople.

If you are opposed to this putsch, but are not one of the courageous ones in Congress giving your all to stopping it, you may think you will escape any significant consequences. Keep your head down, this too shall pass, it’s not that bad, the midterms will turn the tide, it’s only four years, and so on. You will find out, too late, that you were wrong. Even a brief study of dictatorships will show you that merely not supporting the coup is more than adequate reason for punishment.

At the very least you will be out of a job, because if there is any part of the government called “Congress” after the coup, membership will be restricted to rubber-stamping sycophants. If you truly want to engage in public service, you will be unable to, because tyrants serve only themselves. At worst, you — and perhaps your family and/or loved ones — will be treated brutally. Just because they can, and also of course as a warning to others.

Meanwhile those of you congresspeople actively supporting the coup may feel quite secure. Perhaps you assume you’ll have a plum job in the new regime; perhaps you’ve even been promised one already. At the least, you imagine you have nothing to fear — you made your support clear all along. The least reward you deserve for that loyalty is a quiet life after the new regime takes over.

You will also find out, too late, that you were mistaken. You failed to learn the simple lessons taught by all prior authoritarian regimes. Everyone — including you — is expendable, disposable. You may be loyal to the regime, but the regime has no loyalty to you. The only reason required to punish you as an example to others is that a fresh example is needed. Another purge is always necessary — sooner or later you will be purged. An autocrat must never run out of scapegoats.

Your connections, your wealth, your prior positions, your undying support for the cause, your whiteness and/or maleness whether real or performative, will all mean nothing when they come for you, too. You will be just another Fabian Schmidt, another Kilmar Abrego Garcia, another Mahmoud Khalil, another “innocent gardener” (and no, your citizenship will not protect you).

So come, congresspeople, heed this call. This is no call to some imaginary “higher self,” or to any abstract concepts or values, or to your oath or affirmation of office. It’s a call to consider what will happen to you, and your family and/or loved ones, because of what you are choosing to do now. A call to consider what kind of life you will actually have under a totalitarian regime, if you survive long enough to have one at all. History makes clear that the adjective in the phrase “brutal dictatorship” is redundant.