The Former President's Approach Pose a Danger to Our Social Fabric.
His domestic and foreign initiatives – including the attempted coup in the past to latest moves and statements – undermine both national and global legal frameworks. But that’s not all.
They threaten the very concept of what we mean by.
A guiding principle of a functioning society is to stop the dominant from harming and taking advantage of the weaker. Failing that, we would be locked in a brutish war where might makes right could survive.
This ideal is central of the Declaration and Constitution. It’s also the heart of the postwar international order advocated by the United States, built on international cooperation, democracy, human rights, and the supremacy of law.
Yet, it is a fragile ideal, easily violated by those who seek to abuse their influence. Preserving it demands that the influential have enough integrity to abstain from seeking immediate gains, and that the rest of us demand responsibility when they fail.
Unchecked strength does not equal right. It makes for instability, chaos, and conflict.
Each instance people or corporations or countries that are richer and more powerful attack and exploit those that are not, the structure of society frays. Should such behavior are left unchecked, the system fails. If not stopped, the world can fall into instability and violence. We have seen this pattern previously.
We now inhabit a global community marked by extreme inequality. Authority and resources are increasingly centralized than ever before. This encourages the elite to take advantage of the disadvantaged because they feel omnipotent.
The resources of certain ultra-wealthy individuals is difficult to fathom. The influence of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace extends over numerous countries. Artificial intelligence is likely to centralize wealth and power even more. The offensive capability of the leading countries is unmatched in recorded history.
Enabled by a compliant faction and a pliant high court, the executive office has been made into the most powerful and unaccountable entity of state power in recent memory.
Put it all together and you grasp the threat.
An unbroken thread connects past breaches of norms to ongoing menaces. Each were based on the arrogance of omnipotence.
There is a similar pattern in international affairs: in wars of aggression, in coercive diplomacy, and in the worldwide exploitation by massive conglomerates.
Yet, raw power does not make right. It makes for fragility, revolution, and armed conflict.
The lessons of the past reveal that frameworks designed to constrain the powerful also protect them. Without such constraints, their relentless pursuit for greater influence and riches eventually cause their collapse – along with their enterprises, countries, or domains. And risk world war.
This kind of contempt for legal order will haunt international stability – and indeed a rules-based order – for the foreseeable future.
