Day of Insurrection v. Days of Resurrection  Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan                  If Jan 6,2021 was the day of Constitutional nadir ,Feb 9-13, 2021 were the days  of Constitutional zenith. I am

Day of Insurrection v. Days of Resurrection  Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

If Jan 6,2021 was the day of Constitutional nadir ,Feb 9-13, 2021 were the days  of Constitutional zenith. I am alluding to what transpired and begun and on, in the oldest democracy in the world- United States of America.

Jan 6 was the Day of Insurrection when the Trump Base invaded the Capitol Hill, Washington DC, to try and overturn the POTUS elections. And 7 persons died including one police officer put to death and two who took their own lives unable to face the facts. Feb 9-13 were the Days of Resurrection of Constitution.Literally.

The Senate Trial of the 2nd impeachment trial  of Donald J Trump was a riveting show,  put  up on the oldest constitutional stage – the Capitol Hill- which holds the two Houses of the US Congress.

Truth to tell, the result of the jurors- particularly Republican 45+Senators who had made up their choice between US Constitution v. Trump’s Diktats and Public Interest v. Personal Interest.There were several Ivy League masters’ at constitutional law, no less, in their ranks. There could not  be worse shame!

No matter how compelling  the evidence marshalled by the Impeachment Managers from the US House of Representatives was, the Trumpians were not interested. They were disdainfully indifferent. For, they were worried like hell with the Trump’s base,  that he could whip  them into a frenzy from  his Mar a Lago abode.

The G. O.P. Senators were concerned with their re elections in  the mid terms, in 2022 and beyond.

The so called conservatives who swear by the  US Constitution,its Founders, Textualists and Originalists, a law and order party,  have abandoned everything Abraham Lincoln stood for and gone for the jugular wing of democratic traditions,  joining hand, foot, mouth and more with the insurrectionists.

For  the constitutionalists, the Democrats’ case for the Second Impeachment epitomised ‘Constitutional Cancel Culture’, in the language of Trump defence team, was new and novel. The Trump defence team, put together,  after several hiccups and walk outs, was never more embarrassed when the time lines of Trump speeches and tweets clearly pointed to the umbilical link  to an ‘incitement to insurrection’ the one line impeachment charge. One of the members threatened to walk out mid hearing and had to ‘persuaded, cajoled, begged’ by Trump to stay on.It cannot get any worse.

However persuasive the House Impeachment Mangers  were in their 16 hour audio-video presentation, the 3 hour response from the Trump defence team (they waived  the balance 13 hours available to them which communicated its own story), seems more than adequate for an acquittal of Trump, which Joe Biden predicted was the only result on the cards.  Not because the 45+ GOP were convinced. But because they chose to see no evil, hear no evil. Great constitutional wisdom!

In the legal fraternity, it is often joked ‘ If you don’t have the facts, you pound the law. If you don’t have law too, you pound the table’. Trump’s defence team pounded the tables,  so hard that many of them, over 240 years old must be creaking and breaking down,  symptomatic of the Grand Old Party itself.

For the likes of me, it was great television. Fact is stranger than Fiction. Even in this Post Truth era, the constitutional drama was a feast,  like no other. America rose and fell and rose and fell and rising and falling,  as the oldest democracy.As the leader of the free world, the shaming events also disclosed the brighter side of what a live and throbbing democracy is it ought to be.

US Constitution may be torn. Tattered. Not shredded yet. Who is to blame? Possibly not Trump. But the 73 million who voted for him despite…We The People.

(Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court)