July 13, 2022
The martial law “conspiracy” topic is not completely unhinged. But it is completely unhinged for the Republican grassroots to have called for it.
The fact of the matter, which needs to be kept in mind from the outset, is that there are emergency powers that have been passed in the civil sphere, and using these are a slippery slope toward a state that Americans from the Founders to now have always opposed. Which is why we pretty much always smack down anyone trying to do it the sneaky way. If you’re an American, you’re against monarchy categorically, and martial law is regression to monarchical oppression. I don’t think it’s out of the question to expect all decent Americans to oppose “martial law”, even if they think it makes them sound so “tough”, and/or “manly” which is realistically, something the right-wing grassroots feels is slipping away from them. Notice and remember that Trump rallies made middle-aged white men feel their lost potency and vitality again, of course what he was feeding them was nothing but the rhetoric of pornography. Keep in mind also that there is something called martial law, that regulates people actually in the military. In some times in the past, parts of the military code of laws have been applied to civilian regions - the most proper examples have been during the Civil War, and the Japanese internment. But this idea has always been connected only to some overwhelming state of war. And the civilian population has always risen up against martial law, through the legitimate political institutions of civil society, including the law. Etc.
The hooligans among this January 6th insurrection mob, calling for martial law to be declared, don’t realize that it would have harmed their own “leader” Donald Trump, the former President. But I refuse to acknowledge the fantasy that “the people” would have protected based on something their own representatives in government hadn’t been thinking about or working on. Sure enough, some of the Republican incumbents were talking through memos and that notorious text by Representative Greene, about the concept of martial law (per Washington Post). But I think that term is actually in the discourse for non-policy, historical reasons. It just happened to be laying around when an administration with no knowledge of the rule of law, with dictatorial tendencies, and a criminal tendency toward idle talk about installing fascist policy into the American policy environment, wanted to stay in power past the election (i.e. during the transitional period): and that is the real issue. I do think that lame ducks should have to enter into some moral calculus to exercise their influence based on a mandate they have lost.
The mob breaching the Capitol defenses calling for martial law to be declared to keep Donald Trump, the lame-duck president, in office, appears to me to be absurd, and just illustrates how this idle-talk former administration lied to its own supporters, and misled them toward taking actions that in fact wouldn’t make their voices heard, but would rather get them into legal trouble. And, all because they did very little but idly talk. Here’s one example why this martial law talk was just idle talk. There is a standard in martial law, I believe it is the Yamashita standard, of command responsibility: that is, a commander whose subordinate commits a crime is liable for that crime. It was applied to the case of the commander of the American troops who committed the My Lai massacre, also. So let’s say in this increasingly absurd hypothetical, that martial law at all applied to what happened on January 6th - under command responsibility doctrines, Commander-in-Chief Trump or some Trump administration officials could be held directly liable for any legal violation done by the mob under the martial law environment, even petty crimes like property destruction and for the assault and battery on the police officers. Not liable for encouraging it, but directly liable for not discouraging it. Of course this is absurd, but not because martial law isn’t set up like that, but rather because it didn’t happen. And the very people who were calling for martial law, should see very clearly (unless their minds are totally addled) that it is in their interest to admit that it was idle talk, their theory was wrong, and martial law was not and could not be declared. Unless of course, they want Trump to be court-martialed, for their actions? That’d be absurd. This is idle talk from start to finish just like the administration of President Trump was from start to finish.
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