Two thousand and seventy-four years ago this month, Julius Caesar led his troops across the river Rubicon. The river formed the northern border of what we might think of as Rome County, and it was illegal to bring an army into the territory. When he traitorously did so, he de facto declared war on the state, saying, according to some sources, iacta alea est.

The die is cast.

What happened next was civil war and the ascension of Julius Caesar to the position of dictator perpetuo, dictator-for-life. We all know Some of us, who are not illiterate, know how that went. But, in spite of the yeoman’s work of Brutus, Cassius and Decimus, alas, the restoration of the Republic was not to be.

Yesterday evening, the Justice Department released half of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report on the Trump indictments. While the half of the report that details the classified documents case is still on ice, thanks to [check notes] a judge appointed by Trump himself, the released half details Trump’s illegal attempts to remain in power, after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Here’s what Smith had to say about that case in the report, as quoted in today’s New York Times:

The department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind,” Mr. Smith wrote.
He continued: “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial. [emphasis mine]

This is as gobsmacking a statement as has ever been made concerning an American president and the fact that it refers to an American president-elect, set to be sworn in for a second term in one week, pushes it beyond comprehension. This is by design, of course. Smith wants to shock us and shake us. But in that, he has failed.

When a leader is as corrupt as Donald Trump—a level of corruption simply never before seen in our politics—and that corruption has been almost entirely out in the open for years, our collective cognitive dissonance prevents us from even understanding what’s happening, let alone preventing it. We can never go back to our illusions that we elect reasonably qualified presidents to serve us, who sometimes miss the mark in spite of our hopes.

We have crossed the Rubicon. We have reelected a criminal president, the only one we knew to be a criminal—a convicted felon—before we elected him.

The American Empire has long been compared to the Roman, but most just in the sense of its predicted decline and collapse. But Rome didn’t fall when Caesar seized power. Nor did it fall when the conspirators assassinated him. The empire continued on for another five hundred and twenty years.

But the dream of the Republic was dead.