Donald Trump's Actions Constitute a Threat to Our Social Fabric.
The national and international strategies – ranging from the challenge to the democratic process five years ago to latest moves and statements – erode not only domestic and international legal frameworks. The implications are broader.
They endanger the core idea of civilization itself.
A moral purpose of any advanced culture is to stop the stronger from attacking and exploiting the weaker. Failing that, we would be trapped in a brutish war where survival of the strongest could survive.
This concept is embedded of the nation's founding texts. It’s also the core of the postwar international order advocated by the US, built on collective action, democratic governance, human rights, and the supremacy of law.
Yet, it is a vulnerable ideal, easily violated by those who choose to misuse their authority. Upholding it requires that the influential have enough integrity to abstain from seeking short-term wins, and that the public hold them accountable if they don't.
Absolute power is not right. It results in instability, upheaval, and hostilities.
Each instance individuals, companies, or nations that are advantaged target and use those that are less so, the structure of civilization unravels. If these actions are allowed to continue, the structure collapses. Allowing it to persist, the world can descend into chaos and war. We have seen this pattern previously.
Today, we live in a global community grown vastly more unequal. Influence and wealth are more concentrated than in recent memory. This encourages the privileged to take advantage of the weaker because they act with a sense of above the law.
The resources of certain ultra-wealthy individuals is almost beyond comprehension. The influence of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors covers a vast portion of the world. Artificial intelligence is could centralize economic and political clout further. The offensive capability of the major powers is unprecedented in recorded history.
Enabled by political allies and an accommodating high court, the presidency has been transformed into the supreme and answerable-to-none entity of state power in the modern era.
Put it all together and you see the danger.
An unbroken thread links past lawless actions to current threats. These were premised on the hubris of absolute power.
There is much the same in the actions of other powers: in wars of aggression, in expansive ambitions, and in the global depredation by massive conglomerates.
However, unfettered might does not make right. It makes for fragility, upended order, and war.
Historical evidence demonstrates that rules and conventions to limit the powerful also protect them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for greater influence and riches ultimately bring them down – and with them their enterprises, countries, or domains. And pave the way for global conflict.
This kind of contempt for legal order will plague America and the global community – and the very idea of civilization – for the foreseeable future.
