Are You Denying the Current U.S. Revolutionary War?

Revolutionary Wars and Civil Wars

As I thought about the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, I began wondering what’s the difference between a revolutionary war and a civil war. After musing a while, I decided the difference is that if the secessionists win, it’s called a revolutionary war, but if the national government wins, it’s called a civil war. I don’t know whether the U.S. is in a revolutionary war or a civil war right now. What I do know is that it’s a cold war, and it began at least as far back as the 1990s with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

In 2011, CNN published the article “Newt Gingrich, the man who changed Washington” by Lawrence Lessig. Lessig wrote, “The Framers of our Constitution meant Congress to be a great deliberative body. It has become an embarrassment. Congress doesn’t deliberate to resolve important national issues. Congress fundraises, and postures to fundraise, to support the next fight for control.” He later writes, “Gingrich concentrated the ‘work’ of Congress into a three-day ‘work’ week… He ended any idea of bipartisanship. Instead, as Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tennessee, has described, the focus of Congress after Gingrich’s reforms became the ‘majority of the majority,’ (i.e., the majority of the Republicans) polarizing the institution to the end of assuring ever more loyal and energized troops.”

Prior to Speaker Gingrich’s reign, Republicans and Democrats lived and work together in Washington, DC. They developed the “know, like, and trust” relationships I wrote about in my post How To Lobby Republicans If You’re a Liberal that are so important for people to work together for common goals. Instead, under Gingrich the term Republican In Name Only (RINO) was applied to any Republican who broke with party leadership and worked across party lines with Democrats in create bipartisan legislation both parties could support. The Constitution created a government rooted in compromise, but for Republicans since the 1990s, compromising with Democrats become synonymous with aiding the enemy, rather than working with the opposition.

Lessig wrote, “Gone is any semblance of deliberation, or the idea that there is a business of the nation to be done, as opposed to the business of the party in power. Instead, the institution that Gingrich inherited — the one in which Democrats worked with Republicans to pass the most important tax reform in modern history (Reagan’s), and in which Republicans led Democrats to break a filibuster in the Senate and pass the most important social legislation in a century (The Civil Rights Act of 1964) — was gone. What replaced it is the completely dysfunctional institution which practically no American has confidence in today.”

What Gingrich began in the 1990s continues today. In the 2024 Reuters article, “Why Congress is becoming less productive“, Moria Warburton interviewed Michael Thorning of the Bipartisan Policy Center and several members of Congress. Warburton wrote, “‘Congress is not spending enough time in Washington to get the basics done,’ Thorning said. The shortened in-person schedule ‘really interferes with members’ one opportunity to interact with each other, to learn collectively, to ask questions of witnesses collectively.’

“Representative Derek Kilmer, a Democrat who chaired the now-defunct House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, said the issue of Congress’s shortened schedule was the main thing he would fix if given a choice. ‘Part of the reason why when people are watching C-SPAN and no one’s there, it’s because they’re on three other committees at the same time,’ he told Reuters. ‘The dynamic that creates is members ping pong from committee to committee. It’s not a place of learning or understanding. You airdrop in, you give your five minute speech for social media, you peace out.’

“‘Time is the biggest challenge,’ Representative William Timmons, Kilmer’s Republican counterpart on the modernization committee, agreed. ‘We have to build trust with our colleagues, and we don’t have the time to build the trust with our colleagues.'”

Constitutional Rot

In 2017, Jack M. Balkin wrote the paper Constitutional Crisis and Constitutional Rot. At the time, he argued the U.S. was not in a constitutional crisis but was suffering from constitutional rot, i.e, “a degradation of constitutional norms that may operate over
long periods of time.” The paper is fascinating and eerily prescient. He noted, “Democratic constitutions depend on more than obedience to law. They depend on well-functioning institutions that balance and check power and ambition. They depend on the public’s trust that government officials will exercise power in the public interest and not for their own personal benefit or for the benefit of private interests and cronies.”

I don’t know any president who has done more to destroy trust in U.S. institutions than President Trump. I assume that’s one of the reasons 154 presidential historians ranked Trump last according to “Official Results of the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey“. Note the date means the survey was conducted before Trump began his second term.

Sadly, both U.S. political parties have also contributed to that decline, but the Republican party has contributed far more. Gingrich launched the Republican party on its course of betraying the principles of mutual respect, openness to other perspectives, compromise, and placing the nation’s well-being above the party’s. That course deepened constitutional rot’s “two serious risks to democratic politics”:

• behaving toward the opposition in ways that create “increasing and widening cycles of retribution” leading to “greater loss of confidence in government, distrust, and polarization”
• cheating and preventing political competition leading to “a gradual descent into authoritarian or autocratic politics”.

Balkin continues, “Such states may preserve the empty form of representative democracy—they may have written constitutions and regular elections; and they may adhere for the most part to the rule of law formalities. But power is increasingly concentrated and unaccountable; the press, civil society, political opponents, civil servants, and the judiciary no longer serve as independent checks on the power of the people in charge. Indeed, political leaders may systematically seek to weaken or co-opt each of these possible sources of opposition. [Italics added.]”

Examples of Trump’s efforts to weaken or co-opt opposition include

• his lawsuits against media outlets and journalists he sees criticizing him
• the Administration’s attacks on universities for diversity, equity, and inclusion policies
• his intimidation of Republican MOCs he sees as disloyal to him
• firing career administrative staff who he thinks may be disloyal to him
• he and past Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell effectively packing the Supreme Court (by keeping conservative Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat open from his death on February 13, 2016 (nine months before the 2016 general election, so it would not be filled by a President Obama appointee) and rushing to fill liberal Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat upon her death on September 18, 2020 (two months before the 2020 general election, so it would be filled by a Trump appointee).

Rising Fascism in the U.S.

In a nation of facts and alternate “facts”, i.e., beliefs or wishes, a reputable dictionary is a great tool. I often say the hardest thing humans do is communicate–well! Since the same word has multiple meanings or different meanings to different people, I like to use Webster’s New World College Dictionary as a reference. It defines fascism as “a system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic enterprise under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism, and militarism, etc.”

An example of the Republican march toward fascism’s one-party dictatorship and another example of the constitutional rot Balkin wrote about is the Republican party’s exclusion of Democrat MOCs (who represent slightly less than half the residents and states in the U.S.) in creating and passing the federal budget reconciliation bill (aka, H.R. 1, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act). The Republican party’s efforts to remove local election officials and install party loyalists in state governments causes me to worry that the 2026 elections may be so rigged against Democrats, that Democrats are unable to win back the House of Representatives or Senate.

Rising Denial in the U.S.

I used the phrase revolutionary war in this article’s title. I defined a revolutionary war as one in which the secessionists win. My dictionary defines secession as “an act of seceding, formal withdrawal or separation”. I’d be shocked if Trump and his Republican party actually declared they will no longer obey the Constitution. But through their actions, they’re showing me they no longer actually support the Constitution or the democratic republic form government it created.

I believe Trump is so lost in the fantasy world he’s created to protect his ego and hide his deeply buried insecurity that he can no longer perceive reality. I believe Republican MOCs are denying the reality of what they’re doing. They refuse to see the costs their “One Big Beautiful Bill” will cause to their constituents and the rest of the country. The bill’s name itself smacks of denial and wishful thinking.

Like an addict, they refuse to see reality because they’re afraid of losing their positions as MOCs, their honor, and their perceived integrity. Trump and Republican MOCs can’t allow themselves to feel the guilt their actions would cause a sane person, so they deny, minimize, and lock away the truth that their actions are destroying the government created by our Constitution and replacing it with a fascist government.

I’m afraid the majority of U.S. citizens in this great country are also in denial. It’s easier to focus on the day-to-day demands of life than face the fear that many of our federal, state, and local representatives no longer feel compelled to serve us and instead serve themselves. Many in the U.S. believe politicians, i.e., our representatives, have always done that. Having directly met with MOCs and their staffs, I disagree with that perspective. The folks in Congress I’ve met believe they are representing their constituents as well as they can — even when some are mistaken by their own deceit.

As an addict in recovery, I know breaking through denial is painful and scary. I also know living in denial kept me locked in a fantasy world, deepening the hole I was digging myself in and unaware of my true power and worth. God, the Universe, Evolution, Nature whatever you want to call the power greater than ourselves, gave each of us the power to choose what to do with our lives.

We can do whatever we want to do with its blessing; we have free choice. The only catch is the greater power created a system in which there are consequences for each choice we make. I know from personal experience, eventually those consequences break through denial. It’s just sometimes they do so only after we’ve wrecked or wasted our lives.

I hope I’ve shown above the Republican Party has ceased being a political party or even supporting the Constitution. As I wrote in Why Conservatives Must Vote Against Republicans this Tuesday before the 2020 general elections, “The Republican party does not control Trump—he controls the party. The only thing controlling Trump is his need for adulation; he will say and do whatever he believes makes himself look great to his followers.”

So, since the Republican House and Senate aren’t willing to check Trump and his administration and the lower court decisions checking Trump’s power are usually being overturned by the Supreme Court, the residents of this country can either stay in our comfortable denial or stiffen the spine of Congressional Republicans to remove the stealthy cancer of fascism from our government. The choice–and consequences– are ours.