Donald Trump's Policies Present a Threat to Civilization.
His domestic and foreign strategies – including the challenge to the democratic process in the past to recent actions and threats – undermine not only national and global legal frameworks. The implications are broader.
These actions jeopardize the core idea of what we mean by.
A guiding principle of civilized society is to prevent the stronger from preying upon and using the weaker. Otherwise, we could find ourselves permanently immersed in a brutish war where only the fittest wins.
This concept is embedded of America’s founding documents. It is equally the core of the global system established after WWII advocated by the United States, which stresses multilateralism, popular sovereignty, human rights, and the supremacy of law.
However, it is a delicate ideal, easily violated by those who would exploit their power. Maintaining it demands that the powerful have enough integrity to refrain from seeking immediate gains, and that the public hold them accountable if they don't.
Unfettered might does not equal right. It leads to turmoil, chaos, and conflict.
Each instance individuals, companies, or nations that are richer and more powerful target and use those that are less so, the structure of our shared norms unravels. If these actions are left unchecked, the fabric unravels. Without intervention, the world can descend into disorder and conflict. History provides ample precedent.
We now inhabit a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are increasingly centralized than in recent memory. This invites the privileged to take advantage of the disadvantaged because they perceive themselves as untouchable.
The resources of a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals is staggering. The power of global industrial giants extends over numerous countries. Artificial intelligence is poised to further concentrate resources and influence even more. The offensive capability of the world's largest nations is unprecedented in recorded history.
Enabled by complicit legislators and a sympathetic high court, the highest office has been made into the most dominant and unchecked entity of government in the modern era.
Combine these factors and you perceive the danger.
An unbroken thread links earlier lawless actions to current menaces. Both were founded upon the hubris of absolute power.
You see parallel dynamics in other global contexts: in wars of aggression, in strategic threats, and in the rampant monopolization by industrial titans.
Yet, raw power does not make right. It produces instability, upheaval, and armed conflict.
Historical evidence demonstrates that rules and conventions to limit the influential also protect them. If these guardrails are removed, their insatiable demands for increased control and resources in time bring them down – along with their enterprises, countries, or domains. And risk international catastrophe.
This blatant disregard for rules will haunt international stability – and indeed a rules-based order – for years to come.
