In a sane time, we would call ushering in the inauguration of a new president with the National Guard lining the streets of the capital city the definition of a coup.
But we are not in sane times. And that is why the swearing-in of President Joe Biden was coupled with the biggest security presence in the capital in America’s inauguration history yesterday. According to official estimates, up to 25,000 military personnel were deployed to Washington, D.C., before Wednesday’s event.
This is no way to heal a nation that is bitterly divided. While it’s not unprecedented to have police forces at a presidential inauguration, this is a new level. Its effect is to fear-monger. The National Guardsmen, now garishly stationed at D.C. street blocks, are in response to the events on Jan. 6. But while media outlets like The Atlantic repeat over and over again that the infiltration of the Capitol that day represented an “attempted coup,” it is the Democratic Party, not former president Donald Trump, who now holds control of the presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. If Jan. 6 was a coup, it was a miserable failure.
Aristotle writes — and Rousseau echoes — that tyrants live in constant fear of insurrection. To keep men enslaved, Aristotle says the despotic ruler must keep them isolated and divided from one another. A free nation, on the other hand, doesn’t line its streets with police to ensure a peaceful transition of power — it doesn’t need to.