Donald Trump's Approach Present a Threat to Civilization.
His national and international policies – including the challenge to the democratic process previously to recent actions and threats – undermine not only domestic and international legal frameworks. But that’s not all.
These actions endanger the fundamental meaning of what we mean by.
The guiding principle of a functioning society is to prevent the dominant from harming and taking advantage of the vulnerable. Failing that, we risk being permanently immersed in a state of nature where only the fittest prevails.
This principle lies at the center of the Declaration and Constitution. It’s also the core of the postwar international order supported by the United States, which stresses multilateralism, popular sovereignty, human rights, and the rule of law.
However, it is a fragile construct, easily violated by those who seek to abuse their authority. Maintaining it demands that the those in charge have the moral fortitude to avoid seeking temporary advantages, and that society hold them accountable when they fail.
Unfettered might does not make right. It results in uncertainty, disruption, and conflict.
Each instance people or corporations or countries that are wealthier and stronger attack and exploit those that are not, the structure of society weakens. Should such behavior are allowed to continue, the system fails. Allowing it to persist, the world can plunge into disorder and conflict. We have seen this pattern previously.
Today, we live in a global community marked by extreme inequality. Influence and wealth are increasingly centralized than ever before. This invites the privileged to take advantage of the less fortunate because they act with a sense of omnipotent.
The wealth of a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals is staggering. The reach of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors covers numerous countries. Artificial intelligence is likely to consolidate economic and political clout to a greater degree. The destructive power of the major powers is without parallel in human history.
Enabled by complicit legislators and a sympathetic supreme court, the executive office has been transformed into the supreme and answerable-to-none agent of the state in recent memory.
Combine these factors and you see the danger.
An unbroken thread links past transgressions to current provocations. Each were founded upon the hubris of omnipotence.
One observes a similar pattern in other global contexts: in territorial invasions, in strategic threats, and in the global depredation by powerful corporate entities.
But, strength without restraint does not create right. It makes for fragility, revolution, and armed conflict.
Historical evidence demonstrates that frameworks designed to constrain the influential also shield them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for more power and wealth ultimately lead to their downfall – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk world war.
Such lawlessness will plague America and the global community – and indeed civilization – for the foreseeable future.
