In Federalist No. 1, Alexander Hamilton warned us about the threat of an opportunistic demagogue “unleashing a violent mob and primitive impulses against the Constitution to override the political and constitutional infrastructure of representative democracy.”

“The demagogue panders to the negative emotions of the crowd, pretending to be the champion of the people, only to wage war against the Constitution, the legal order, and the democratic political process, all of which belong to the people. He starts as a ‘demagogue,’ who knows how to whip up the crowd into a mob frenzy, but ends as a ‘tyrant,’ a ruler who uses his power to oppose the people, Hamilton said.“

If you look at the historical text, Hamilton suggests that these opponents of democracy will let loose “a torrent of angry and malignant passions.” This Founding Father looks at the conduct of those who oppose the Constitution and concludes “that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty.”

Hamilton literally tells us what unfolded on January 6, 2021, in the very first Federalist Paper.

Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy (2023) by Jamie Raskin can only be described as a searing memoir covering the first forty-five days of 2021 that saw Congressman Raskin lose his only son to suicide, endure a mob’s violent attack on the U.S. Capitol to try and upend the election of Joe Biden, and lead the second impeachment against the former president who planned the outlines of the assault and incited that mob. On the very first pages he reminds us that we had too long looked away from a very old threat, the one raised by Hamilton in the prescient Federalist No. 1.

Raskin begins Unthinkable with a grief-filled description of the beauty of a son who falls into a long and deep depression that is exacerbated by the isolation of the pandemic lockdowns. A very good writer, Raskin takes us through Tommy’s life and his son’s ultimate decision to end that life, always facing the unfolding crisis with brutal honesty and immense grief. He shares with us how he and his family work to make sense of the senseless. I cried on more than one page, reading of a father’s depths of despair at the loss of a child.

The second section is a lengthy and novel-like description of the insurrection, as Trump and House GOP leaders act on “the dictum of the right’s favorite philosopher, Carl Schmitt, who said, ‘Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.'” The day after burying his son, Raskin, his daughter, and his son-in-law are trapped in the Capitol and fearing for their lives at the hands of a violent mob. For six months, Congressman Raskin, Speaker Pelosi, and her leadership team had gamed out every scenario that they deemed imaginable for the GOP to try and steal the election. But they missed one option: Trump assembling a large group of thugs and self-styled militia to storm the Capitol. As Raskin came to realize, “American carnage was not actually what Trump was denouncing on his first day in the presidency; it was what he was promising. And he had delivered.”

Once order is restored late in the evening of January 6th and in the early morning hours of January 7th, Speaker Pelosi asks Raskin to head up the impeachment managers in the House, an offer Raskin sees as providing a purpose at a time when he was burdened with grief. The book’s last section provides an insider account of the work of impeachment, and the unprecedented Senate trial that produced the most bipartisan Presidential impeachment vote in American history. And he reminds us again of Rep. Liz Cheney’s epic statement read into the record the day the House votes for impeachment.

“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.“

To which I can only say Amen.

However, as Raskin says near the end of the preface, “ultimately, this is not a book about Donald Trump. Quite the opposite. It is about the kind of people whose dreams and actions have allowed us to survive Donald Trump and his sinister incitement of racism and hatred among Americans who feel displaced and threatened by the uprooting of America’s racial caste system.”

As we enter another election season, facing threats from Trump and his many enablers who have been working on what journalist Anand Giridharadas describes as “a crock-pot coup, simmering low and slow, under cover, breaking down the fibers of our electoral system, until one day democracy itself is cooked,” Unthinkable is a “vital reminder of the ongoing struggle for the soul of American democracy and the perseverance that our Constitution demands from us all.”

More to come . . .

DJB

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See also:

• When The New York Times came calling (2024)
• This is what democracy looks like (2023)
• Lessons Jamie Raskin learned from his father (2021)

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The Weekly Reader links to the works of other writers I’ve enjoyed.

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Pictures of Alexander Hamilton and The Federalist Papers via Wikimedia.