Donald Trump's Actions Constitute a Danger to Civilization.
His internal and external policies – ranging from the effort to overturn the election five years ago to latest moves and warnings – weaken both national and global legal frameworks. The implications are broader.
They threaten the very concept of a civilized world.
A guiding principle of any advanced culture is to stop the dominant from attacking and exploiting the vulnerable. Failing that, we risk being permanently immersed in a brutish war where might makes right wins.
This ideal is central of America’s founding documents. It’s also the heart of the modern framework of international relations supported by the United States, emphasizing collective action, democracy, human rights, and the supremacy of law.
Yet, it is a delicate construct, frequently ignored by those who seek to abuse their influence. Upholding it demands that the powerful have enough integrity to abstain from seeking short-term wins, and that the rest of us ensure they answer for their actions should they falter.
Absolute power is not right. It leads to instability, upheaval, and hostilities.
Every time individuals, companies, or nations that are richer and more powerful prey upon those that are not, the fabric of society unravels. Should such behavior are not contained, the fabric unravels. Without intervention, the world can descend into disorder and conflict. It has happened before.
Today, we live in a international landscape with deepening divides. Influence and wealth are more concentrated than in modern history. This creates conditions for the powerful to leverage their position against the less fortunate because they perceive themselves as untouchable.
The wealth of certain tycoons is difficult to fathom. The influence of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors spans numerous countries. Advanced technology is could consolidate economic and political clout further. The offensive capability of the world's largest nations is without parallel in the annals of time.
Empowered by complicit legislators and a pliant high court, the highest office has been transformed into the supreme and answerable-to-none instrument of the state in recent memory.
Consider this confluence and you see the looming crisis.
An unbroken thread connects earlier breaches of norms to ongoing provocations. Both were premised on the overconfidence of omnipotence.
There is a similar pattern in international affairs: in military conflicts, in coercive diplomacy, and in the rampant monopolization by powerful corporate entities.
But, raw power does not make right. It makes for uncertainty, revolution, and bloodshed.
History shows that laws and norms to check the influential also protect them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for greater influence and riches in time bring them down – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk international catastrophe.
This blatant lawlessness will haunt America and the global community – and the very idea of civilization – for a long time.
