Trump's Approach Present a Threat to Civilized Society.
The national and international strategies – from the effort to overturn the election previously to recent moves and warnings – erode not only national and global legal frameworks. The implications are broader.
They endanger the very concept of a civilized world.
A moral purpose of civilized society is to forestall the more powerful from harming and taking advantage of the vulnerable. Failing that, we would be locked in a brutish war where might makes right prevails.
This ideal is embedded of America’s founding documents. It’s also the heart of the postwar international order advocated by the US, which stresses collective action, democratic governance, individual liberties, and the supremacy of law.
Yet, it is a delicate ideal, easily violated by those who seek to abuse their influence. Upholding it demands that the influential have enough integrity to refrain from seeking immediate gains, and that society hold them accountable when they fail.
Unchecked strength does not make right. It results in turmoil, upheaval, and hostilities.
Every time people or corporations or countries that are advantaged target and use those that are less so, the fabric of civilization frays. If these actions are not contained, the fabric unravels. If not stopped, the world can fall into disorder and conflict. We have seen this pattern previously.
Our current reality is a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are increasingly centralized than ever before. This creates conditions for the privileged to exploit the less fortunate because they act with a sense of above the law.
The wealth of a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals is almost beyond comprehension. The power of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors spans a vast portion of the world. AI is could further concentrate economic and political clout to a greater degree. The military might of the world's largest nations is unmatched in human history.
Supported by complicit legislators and an accommodating supreme court, the presidency has been made into the most dominant and unchecked agent of government in recent memory.
Combine these factors and you grasp the danger.
A clear connection ties past transgressions to present-day provocations. These were based on the arrogance of omnipotence.
You see a similar pattern in the actions of other powers: in military conflicts, in strategic threats, and in the worldwide exploitation by powerful corporate entities.
However, unfettered might does not create right. It makes for fragility, upended order, and bloodshed.
Historical evidence demonstrates that laws and norms to limit the influential also protect them. Absent these limits, their endless appetite for more power and wealth eventually cause their collapse – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk world war.
Such contempt for legal order will haunt America and the global community – and indeed civilized conduct – for the foreseeable future.
