Trump's Approach Constitute a Risk to Civilization.
The national and international strategies – ranging from the effort to overturn the election five years ago to current incursions and warnings – erode not only national and global jurisprudence. The implications are broader.
They threaten the fundamental meaning of a civilized world.
The moral purpose of any advanced culture is to forestall the more powerful from attacking and exploiting the weaker. Failing that, we could find ourselves permanently immersed in a brutish war where might makes right wins.
This ideal is embedded of America’s founding documents. It is equally the heart of the postwar international order championed by the America, built on collective action, democratic governance, individual liberties, and the supremacy of law.
Yet, it is a delicate principle, often broken by those who seek to abuse their power. Preserving it requires that the those in charge have the moral fortitude to abstain from seeking temporary advantages, and that society hold them accountable when they fail.
Absolute power does not equal right. It results in turmoil, chaos, and war.
Whenever individuals, companies, or nations that are richer and more powerful prey upon those that are less so, the framework of civilization unravels. Should such behavior are not contained, the structure collapses. Without intervention, the world can plunge into disorder and conflict. It has happened before.
We now inhabit a global community with deepening divides. Influence and wealth are increasingly centralized than ever before. This creates conditions for the powerful to exploit the weaker because they act with a sense of above the law.
The wealth of a handful of tycoons is staggering. The reach of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors extends over much of the globe. AI is could further concentrate resources and influence further. The destructive power of the world's largest nations is unprecedented in the annals of time.
Enabled by political allies and an accommodating judicial body, the executive office has been transformed into the supreme and answerable-to-none agent of government in history.
Consider this confluence and you grasp the threat.
An unbroken thread ties earlier breaches of norms to present-day threats. Each were based on the hubris of invincibility.
There is parallel dynamics in international affairs: in territorial invasions, in strategic threats, and in the worldwide exploitation by powerful corporate entities.
But, raw power does not make right. It produces fragility, revolution, and war.
The lessons of the past reveal that laws and norms to limit the powerful also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for more power and wealth ultimately cause their collapse – along with their corporations, nations, or empires. And threaten global conflict.
Such contempt for legal order will plague America and the global community – and the very idea of civilization – for the foreseeable future.
