It’s not every Friday that the president* takes to the electric Twitter machine to foment insurrection.

Federalism!

The only reason the pandemic hasn’t been the national catastrophe that it could have been is the swift action taken by individual governors, and here is El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago—or some idiot staffer speaking for him—inciting armed resistance against those governors. (And the “Save Your 2nd Amendment” thing aimed at Virginia is precisely that.) He looked at those idiots in Michigan, whom he noted “like” him, which is all that matters, and saw a movement with which he could power a re-election campaign.

Now, he’s signaling that he’s on their side, which is not only stupid from a public health standpoint, it's absolutely dangerous from a political standpoint. There are certain viewpoints that history tells us are perilous when they begin circulating in our politics, and this president* has managed to mix up two of them. He created an extreme devolution of federal authority to the states, and now he’s using the power of the presidency to incite resistance to the very situation his nonfeasance created in the first place. In theory, it’s like there were four sides to the Civil War. It’s a recipe for a domestic version of the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

And is there anything from the other leaders of The Party of Lincoln?

Hello?

Is this on?

Hello?

There’s far too much of this. The 25th Amendment exists for a reason.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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