READ: Democrats need to call that emergency meeting — now.
No single action destroyed Rome. Acquiescence did. Have we learned the lesson?
The Roman historian Velleius Paterculus tried to warn future generations about how republics actually fall. He wrote in the early first century that it didn’t happen in a single moment of catastrophe. Downfalls were engineered through small moments of inaction that spiraled, until extraordinary measures become ordinary.
He wrote:
“Precedents do not stop where they begin. However narrow the path upon which they enter, they create for themselves a highway whereon they may wander with the utmost latitude… no one thinks a course is base for himself which has proven profitable to others.”1
Sound familiar?
He was describing the final decades of the Roman Republic, when strongmen discovered they could bend laws to suit their personal ambitions. That’s not what killed Rome, though. It’s when the opposing faction, terrified of being outmaneuvered, started doing the same. Then the cycle of escalation began, with each side justifying its excesses as necessary to “save the state,” until the state itself dissolved into autocracy.
The warning is unsubtle, to say the least. Once a leader discovers he can violate the law without consequence, the law ceases to be law. After that, the copycats cement the chaos. That’s why I’ve been out there screaming about how the rule of law is on life support, if not dead. My point is not that it’s irreversible. In fact, I’m saying we have one last shot. Once the opposing faction accepts that “this is how politics is now done,” a republic enters its final phase. We have a shot at turning it back.
History rarely announces itself in real time. The Roman Senate didn’t wake up one morning to find Caesar already crowned and their whole experiment ground to dust and blasted into the void. No, no. It was chipped away by very bad precedent. The norms were loosened and then shredded, and even those who were terrified at first by the disorder came to embrace the lawlessness they’d once reviled, albeit as a “temporary” tool to undo the other side’s lawlessness.
In between calls this week, I’ve been literally dusting off old books (wear a mask when you’re dusting; save your lungs) knowing the reminders are all in there. We are living in one of those hinge-moments now, like the final years of the Roman Republic. It’s not “coming” anymore. IT. IS. HERE.
Donald Trump’s second presidency has already shown us what the MAGA movement always wanted. They puffed up their chests to show us how big and tough they were. Then they removed all constraints on executive power, dismissed the law as an inconvenience, and transformed public institutions into private instruments of punishment and reward. They did this in ten months. As my friend
says, the man in the White House has become a perfect encapsulation of what the Founder’s feared. The caricature is immaculate.What may look some days like petty civic vandalism — knocking down White House walls and toying with ballroom schematics — has widened into something more Nero-like than America has ever seen. (Nero, by the way, was the one who “fiddled” while Rome burned.) We’ve got a leader who governs by spectacle, spite, and personal grievance, unmoored from any restraint or principle whatsoever. Seven years ago, I warned about it in an op-ed from inside the Trump administration, writing:
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making…President Trump’s impulses are generally…anti-democratic.
The words sent him into a tailspin. Why? Because of course he knew it was true!
The danger now is that his example will be replicated. While Donald Trump is far from a lame duck and will continue to create wreckage, I’m growing worried about what his acolytes and the opposition will do when it’s all over. Will they decide that his gratuitous use of emergency powers was a dangerous way to govern, or more likely, will they use them against one another in an endless tit-for-tat?
In Rome, this was the irreversible step. When one faction used power without limits, the other concluded the only way to preserve the state was to do the same. I’ve always told students that the moment in history when you see the inflection point is usually when one side says: “Hey y’all, it’s time to fight fire with fire.” Then it all goes downhill. That was how the Roman Republic ended, i.e. with the normalization of lawlessness as politics.
Democrats need to call a once-in-a-generation emergency meeting. Now. About what, you say? About all of this, from the encroachment of federal power to the corruption oozing out of the windows of the White House in rivers of fake gold. Why haven’t we seen top Democratic leaders across America assemble? Why haven’t we seen them stand together and explain the gravity of the crisis? I’m serious. Does anyone have a good answer? There is no good answer. It’s way overdue. And this would be a particularly good week to schedule it.
Democrats just won elections across the country by running on something deeply unfashionable in Washington these days. Competence. People are hungry for boring, functional governance and terrified that our country feels like it’s becoming something other than a democracy. The voters rewarded it in spades on Tuesday. They didn’t need soaring speeches and spectacle. They’re so tired of the carnival of vendettas and waking up wondering what norm was broken overnight, that they chose the people on the ballot who seemed steadiest.
“Man, oh, man! Can someone please shut these clowns up?” That’s what they wanted. Tell me you don’t think the same thing while reading the morning news.
Anyway, my point is that the Democrats — all the governors, senators, House leaders, mayors, rising voices — should be meeting at an emergency summit. I’ve been saying this for a few weeks. But I mean it more than ever. There’s an opportunity to do it from a position of strength, rather than as a reaction to the next Trumpian act of incompetence that shocks the conscience of a nation. Leaders lead. They don’t react.
“Well, Miles, what would you have the top Democrats say or do?”
Not a whole lot, frankly. Americans like me just want to see them standing together and saying publicly and clearly: We will not play the dictator’s game. We will not respond to lawlessness with lawlessness. We will defend the Constitution — the thing that makes us American. That IS our agenda.
Last night, I was with retired Lieutenant General
in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He made a similar point in the simplest, starkest terms. While he was Commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, he traveled to bases across the continent, asking allied soldiers: What do you swear an oath to? The answers came back like a civics lesson in reverse. The French military swears an oath to the French people. The German military swears loyalty to the state. Many others swear to sovereigns and kings, or leaders, or cultural identity.
But only one military in the world swears an oath to a piece of paper. Not a leader. Not a party. Not a flag. The United States armed forces — and all of the nation’s public servants, for that matter — swear an oath to the Constitution. That’s the closest thing to a miracle you or I have ever inherited.
Lately, though, Washington has veered so far away from this tradition that the only true “agenda” the opposition needs to declare is that it will defend that piece of paper. Sure, other things matter — healthcare, economics, immigration — but nothing matters more than that piece of paper because it affects everything else. That’s not hard for voters to understand. They said as much on Tuesday.
Almost every reckless and abusive act in this presidency has come from crumpling up the constitutional oath and flipping it into the gilded waste bins in the White House. Using federal power to punish critics. Deploying troops onto American streets without legal authority. Announcing the dismantling of federal agencies by fiat. Seizing money Congress did not appropriate. Ordering strikes to kill people in international waters without legal cause. If another country behaved like this, we would call it what it is — the decay phase of a democracy!
So Democrats don’t need to wring their hands and debate which policy issues poll better. They just need to gather and announce a spirited defense of the basic operating code of the Republic. To promise stability. To punish corruption. What’s more, they need to do it before the next crisis hits and not after it, when it will look like panic instead of principle.
Voters said something loudly on Tuesday. They want stability back. They want the President to stop pick-pocketing them at the grocery store and trying to sneak a few hundred million bucks for himself out of the U.S. Treasury. They want all of the carelessness and chaos stopped and — for goodness sake — a government that does what it’s supposed to do and not what’s forbidden from doing.
It’s time for Democratic leaders to walk out together on the steps of the Capitol, or Independence Hall, or maybe the National Archives, and acknowledge this. They should speak with one voice and a little bit of fire in the belly.
“Hey, America, we heard you. We’re unified against the madness. And oh-by-the-way, Donald Trump, if you’re listening, we’re here to put you on notice, you feckless thug: It’s on.”
Your friend, in defiance,
P.S. WHAT’S HAPPENING ON TREASON
Here’s what’s coming up.
TODAY / Fri, Nov 7 @ 4pm ET - Katie Phang! - I’ll close out the week with my friend
on her Substack. Stay tuned.IN CASE YOU MISSED IT / Ex-Trump spy chief Sue Gordon sounds off - I love being on with Sue. Enough said. You can listen to the replay here.
Mike Duncan, The Storm Before the Storm
Yes!! I agree with all you wrote and loved the picture! What did Tuesday tell me...Democrat candidates can lead with kitchen table issues and at the same time fight against autocracy! That is exactly what all of you have been saying for a long time! Now we saw it in action!!
There’s so much excitement and momentum now since Tuesday. All this positive energy must be kept in motion. Wins in 2026 could lead to multiple investigations, impeachment and convictions in 2027.