The United States has just taken one giant leap towards civil war

Joseph Robinette Biden Junior is the new Lucius Cornelius Sulla, first dictator of Rome

It's often been said that the United States is the new Rome. Both started as tiny settlements and slowly became the superpower of their era. The Founding Fathers of the United States deliberately modeled the new Republic on early Rome, building the new nation upon the foundation of Roman law and adding modern improvements such as federalism and democracy and human rights. Even our early public architecture was copied from Rome, with buildings such as the Capitol and White House exemplifying the Greek Revival style.

Unfortunately, the same partisanship, blatant lawfare, and ultimate contempt for the rule of law which doomed the Roman Republic are present in modern America. Lucius Cornelius Sulla was the first general to openly flaunt the laws of the Roman Republic and establish himself as a dictator. His most notorious act was to write lists of proscription, which were 'hit lists' of his political enemies. Anybody whose name was placed on such a list could be killed, and the killers would then be rewarded by Sulla:

Sulla himself called the Roman people together in an assembly and made them a speech vaunting his own exploits and making other menacing statements in order to inspire terror. He finished by saying that he would bring about a change which would be beneficial to the public if they would obey him. He would not spare one of his enemies, but would visit them with the utmost severity. He would take vengeance by every means in his power on all prætors, quæstors, military tribunes, and everybody else who had committed any hostile act after the day when the consul Scipio violated the agreement made with him. After saying this he forthwith proscribed about forty senators and 1600 knights. He seems to have been the first one to punish by proscription, to offer prizes to assassins and rewards to informers, and to threaten with punishment those who should conceal the proscribed. Shortly afterward he added the names of other senators to the proscription. Some of these, taken unawares, were killed where they were caught, in their houses, in the streets, or in the temples. Others were picked up, carried to Sulla, and thrown down at his feet. Others were dragged through the city and trampled on, none of the spectators daring to utter a word of remonstrance against these horrors. Banishment was inflicted upon some and confiscation upon others. Spies were searching everywhere for those who had fled from the city, and those whom they caught they killed.

The Civil Wars. Appian. Chapter XI. Section 95.

The American Republic is taking the first steps on its path of self-destruction in a slightly different order than the Roman Republic. The Romans had a civil war first and created lists of proscription afterwards. America has abandoned the rule of law even before the eruption of civil war. Donald Trump's conviction on 34 felony charges, and his massive $464 million fine in another case, have set the precedent for every politician in the nation to be arrested and prosecuted and impoverished on bogus charges by their political rivals. The stakes in every election have been raised considerably. An electoral defeat no longer simply means that the losing candidate will hold no office. The losing candidate is now subject to imprisonment and impoverishment by the vengeful victors. This will soon become the 'new normal' in American politics, unless the people vote out of office all of the Democrats who have upended 800 years of Western jurisprudence and devolved our legal system back to the dark days of lists of proscription.

Even a change of government may not suffice. Republicans are already claiming that 'turnabout is fair play' and demanding that candidates provide lists of Democrats that they will prosecute if they are elected. Once the rule of law has been shattered like Humpty Dumpty, it is impossible to reassemble into its original shape.

For example, an article titled "After Trump’s Conviction, Republicans Should Do To Democrats What They Did To Him" states that

Republicans have to make Democrats play by their own rules. They have to inflict pain ruthlessly on Democrats with endless show trials and lawfare, just as Democrats have done to Trump. The leftist radicals who run the Democrat Party only understand power, and they will only stop when they are force-fed their own medicine over and over.

Another author wrote:

Give me a list of which Democrat officials you’re going to put in prison, or get lost. There’s only one way to deal with nuclear war, which is what Democrats have unleashed, and that is mutually assured destruction. Democrats declared war on our entire system of justice and the rule of law, and our only options are victory or defeat. I intend to win. Do you?

It's grotesque yet fascinating to watch the collapse of our Republic in 'real time', in the same way that car wrecks attract attention from rubberneckers despite the horrific injuries suffered by the occupants of the automobiles. The tweets of today demand a 'lite' version of the ancient lists of proscription, with punishments limited to imprisonment and impoverishment, rather than banishment or murder in broad daylight. For now - but perhaps only for now.

And that's the most terrifying part of this entire sordid exercise in lawfare: we are at just the very beginning of our modern proscriptions. How long will it be before somebody, somewhere, organizes a fund raiser on the dark web for the assassination of anybody on such a 'list', with the killers to be paid in untraceable cryptocurrency, upon delivery of all or part of the corpse(s)? We are already halfway there. The first political target has already been unlawfully convicted, and both sides are gleefully writing lists of more political targets.

The next step after unlawful prosecution is persecution, the next step after that is proscription, and the ultimate act of proscription is murder. It doesn't really matter if the first murder victim is a Democrat or a Republican, because after the first murder the other side will adopt the same tactic, as that's how civil disturbances escalate into civil wars. 'Tit for tat' is a classic strategy in 'game theory', where one side gains an advantage for one round by attacking their opponent, and the other side then immediately negates the advantage by mirroring the actions of their opponent and counterattacking.

Decades after Sulla died, the Roman general Julius Caesar had to make a stark decision. Caesar was immune from prosecution while he was away from Rome fighting the Gauls, but then he was recalled to Rome and would lose his temporary immunity as soon as he crossed the border of the province, which was the Rubicon River. He could cross the river alone and take his chances with the Senate, or he could violate the law that banned armies from entering Rome and gamble that he could seize power by force. Caesar decided that war was less risky than standing trial in the Senate. He crossed the Rubicon with his army, famously stating that “The die is cast”, as he gambled that fighting a civil war was a safer option than relying upon Roman law. He won the war, but both the Roman Republic and Caesar came to a bloody end soon afterwards. Once the precedent for terror has been set, fear will poison politics until a new regime overthrows the old one. The genie will not go back in the bottle.

The Democrats have gained a very temporary and transient advantage, but the ultimate cost may well be the destruction of all respect for the rule of law and the revival of the ancient 'rule of claw', where a loss of political power usually results in the loss of your life.

Is that really something to smile about?