2020 Election Post Mortem Part X. What do you do with an act of sedition, and who has committed it, and how can the country get over it.

The flag of treason.  It's been flying everywhere.

Sedition.

We've been seeing a lot of it, in a lot of places, and by people who should, and frankly do, know better, those people seeing the citizens of the United States as ignorant dupes.

What exactly, you may wonder, is sedition?  Well, under the current law, it is defined as follows:

18 U.S § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

So, the elements are:

1.  Two ore more people who;

2.  Conspire to:

• overthrow; or
• put down; or
• destroy by force.

the Government of the United States; or

• to levy war against it;
• or oppose by force the the authority thereof
• or by force prevent, hinder or delay

the execution of the law; or

• by force seize, take or possess any property of the United States contrary to law.

There's no question that the Insurrection of January 6, 2021 was sedition by those who participated in it.  They are guilty of a lot of other things as well, but sedition is one of them.

But what about the political leader, the President of the United States, who urged them into the act?

Well, let's consider he not only did that, but he also made a telephone call, with his confederates, trying to pressure Georgia officials into throwing the election for him.

Sedition?

Well, I suppose it depends on what he meant.  During his impeachment trial it was maintained that things he said in his telephone call with the leader of the Ukraine could have meant more than one thing.  Perhaps that's the case here as well.  But a jury could decide either way here. . . and not just on the statements, but also by the collective acts of pressuring and then urging here and there.

And what about local leaders who backed this farce.  The GOP in more than one location, through its state organizations, has been backing the fantasy that the President won the election.  Is that sedition?  Probably not.  But its not very honorable.

But going further, what about legislators who know, or should know better, and who argue that Senators and Congressmen who are not going along with this should be brought before the state legislator to be held into account. Sedition?  No, but again, distressing.*

And this all matters enormously.

Twice in this country's history the nation has let those who committed grave offenses against the democracy of the nation get away with it; once following the Civil War when it did not try the guilty and punish them under the law, and once in the 1970s when an effort to steal an election through actual theft was covered up by the person it was intended to benefit.**  In both of those instances a national act of mercy was misbegotten and lead to further crimes and errors.  The Reagan administration barely got away with unlawful arms sales, for example.  And now Donald Trump has tried to steal an election, wrecked the conservatives party he belongs to, and put the nation in a state of insurrection.

This time, the guilty must be punished. The act is too brazen, the crime too great, and the implications too vast not to do so.  An insurrection has happened. The capitol has been vandalized for the first time since the War of 1812, when at least it was the British, not rebellious Americans, who did it.*** If we do not, we will pay for it as a nation.

So, the first thing that must be done is to try the insurrectionist.  The penalty is clear, and they should get the full measure of the law.

And those seditionist otherwise involved in this sorry scene should pay as well, including Donald Trump.  The soul of the nation depends on it, and the future of the Republican Party.  Republicans should demand it.  And immediately.

And those politicians urging fantasies upon the people, both great and small? Well, they can't be tried, but it's lawful not to seat them.  

Urging an illegal overthrowal of the elected head of state simply because you disagree with him, and deluding others into the idea that the election was tainted, is the end state of democracies.  Not addressing it puts us on the path trod by Mexico in 1910, Russia in 1917,Germany in 1932, and Italy and Spain prior to that.  The choices are stark but the lessons of the failure to act are clear.

Choices have consequences, including bad and deluded ones.  Unfortunately, they have consequences for everyone, not just the person making them.

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*What about sinful?  At least one of the individuals doing this is my co-religious. Telling lies can be a pretty serious sin from the Catholic prospective. A public official telling them must not only confess his sins, but arguably must rectify the misdeed to the extent he can, which would be a public recanting of his statement.

This assumes knowledge, of course.  A person can't seriously sin if they don't know what they're doing is sinful, from the Catholic prospective. But blinding yourself to the truth may be a factor, perhaps.

And what about the pulpit.  If there's a parishioner in the pews telling lies is there a pastoral duty to correct?  Maybe.

**And in this act of Richard Nixon, it might be noted, there was the irony that his campaign had no need to do this.  Therefore, just as Donald Trump has thrown his party under the bus needless, so had Richard Nixon.

***The Capitol was not even touched during the Civil War, although mostly because the rebellious Southern states didn't have the capacity to do it.