I want to take a moment to address a conspiracy theory I’ve seen emerging out of several right wing echo chambers. Specifically, following the Biden inauguration, there has been a, let’s say, crisis of faith in online communities surrounding the grand unifying conspiracy theory of Q-anon. One in particular which caught my attention claims that Trump will remain President because the United States was actually replaced by a corporation shadow-government founded in the City of London in the 1800s. The “actual” inauguration is in March and the fact that Biden was inaugurated in January means he’s illegitimate and Trump can depose him by reestablishing the real United States as it existed before the corporate version.
Or something. Admittedly I’m skimming because every time I’ve seen this theory it’s been light on details and citations. I think it basically goes without saying that this theory is without basis in reality. But I think examining it offers a chance to shed light on a larger trend of right wing conspiracies, so let’s work through this thought experiment.
Let’s suppose this theory is true. Let’s suppose that the United States as we know it today is not in fact a sovereign state but a non-governmental organization, that is, a corporation, that has assumed all the functions of one. Let’s assume that every accomplishment since was the work of this corporate entity- every law passed, every social program designed and implemented, every road built, every prisoner punished, every tax dollar collected, every war waged, every soldier drafted and bomb dropped, was all the work, not of a constitutional government, but an overgrown company.
Okay, fine. What does that change? I mean, assuming this is true, then it’s the corporation, not the constitutional government, that has all the cards. They pay, and organize, and command the military. They regulate the economy, and reap the revenues from it. They built all the infrastructure that makes the US work. They are in every meaningful sense of the phrase, in charge, whether or not a piece of paper says so. And pretty much everyone is fine going along because that’s how society functions now. Every aspect of American society that would engender loyalty belongs to the corporation, so why would anyone defect now?
What then is supposed to happen in March? Is Donald Trump going to stand on the steps of the capitol alone and pantomime an inauguration? I mean, it’s not like the corporation’s employees- the Chief Justice, Congress, the capitol police, any of those people -are going to help him out. Actually, given what happened at the capitol recently, there’s a good chance he’ll be banned from returning. So I guess he’ll be reciting the oath from Mar a Lago. Maybe he’ll be on television, but if the mainstream media is really as organized against him as is commonly claimed, then it seems unlikely. And he’s banned from most social media. So he’ll say some magic words in an empty room, and then what?
The answer, of course, is nothing. It changes nothing. The world would keep turning and Biden would still be in charge. It’s the old “if a tree falls in a forest” question. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the event is televised. Suppose that Trump or someone close to him manages to hack into the emergency alert system. Suppose that while on camera, Trump makes the first coherent speech of his life, in which he delivers incontrovertible historical proof of constitutional discontinuity; that the modern federal government was founded on a lie, and that by default he is President.
What then? Is the entire federal government going to just roll over? Will the standing military, which didn’t exist during peacetime in the 1800s, disappear in a puff of logic? Is everyone who relies on federal programs going to just stop being hungry and impoverished? Most Americans have never even read the constitution, and even fewer care what it says except when it touches their lives. Of course some people, maybe even powerful people, might decide to follow Trump, probably people who were looking for an excuse to follow him anyways, but that’s not the question I’m driving at. I’m not asking whether people would follow Trump into a civil war. I’m asking why would the historical evidence make a difference.
One of the hard truths about politics is that laws and constitutions are just words on a page unless people believe in and abide by them. The Soviet constitution under Stalin contained guarantees of all the same freedoms as the first amendment of the US constitution, but only one of those societies actually has any history of a political norm of free speech, assembly, press, religion, and petition. If tomorrow some scholar at the library of Congress found a missing page of the constitution in which the founders made electricity unconstitutional, no branch of government would start clamoring to shut down the power grids. Either there would be an immediate amendment, or more likely, the country would all just collectively ignore that part of the constitution and carry on. That is what by all accounts should happen if Trump decides to invoke this particular theory.
Despite all the tradition and ceremony involved in codifying social and political norms into laws, there is nothing intrinsically special about the law that is separate and above how we enforce norms. Or, put another way, laws are not magic spells, and invoking the law does not lessen the blow of the police truncheon. If your worldview is predicated on a chosen one invoking magic words to assume divine right to rule, that’s not a political theory, it is a cult. Of course in a free country you are welcome to privately believe these things, but those views are not compatible with democracy. Furthermore, if that worldview involves the violent purging or overthrow of opponents, then it is a terrorist cult, and those who act on it lose the protections afforded to peaceful political discourse.
