Trump's Approach Present a Risk to Civilized Society.
His national and international policies – including the effort to overturn the election previously to latest moves and threats – erode both domestic and international law. However, the issue goes deeper.
These actions threaten the core idea of a civilized world.
The moral purpose of civilized society is to stop the more powerful from harming and taking advantage of the less powerful. Otherwise, we could find ourselves locked in a conflict of all against all where survival of the strongest could survive.
This ideal lies at the center of the Declaration and Constitution. It’s also the foundation of the modern framework of international relations advocated by the United States, which stresses international cooperation, democracy, fundamental freedoms, and the supremacy of law.
Yet, it is a fragile principle, often broken by those who seek to abuse their power. Maintaining it requires that the powerful have a sense of duty to avoid seeking temporary advantages, and that the rest of us demand responsibility if they don't.
Unchecked strength is not right. It makes for uncertainty, upheaval, and war.
Whenever entities that are richer and more powerful prey upon those that are weaker, the fabric of our shared norms weakens. If such aggression are not contained, the structure collapses. If not stopped, the world can descend into disorder and conflict. History provides ample precedent.
We now inhabit a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Influence and wealth are held by fewer hands than in recent memory. This creates conditions for the powerful to take advantage of the less fortunate because they perceive themselves as untouchable.
The wealth of a handful of tycoons is staggering. The reach of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace spans numerous countries. Artificial intelligence is could consolidate resources and influence to a greater degree. The military might of the leading countries is unmatched in recorded history.
Enabled by complicit legislators and a sympathetic judicial body, the presidency has been transformed into the most powerful and unaccountable instrument of state power in the modern era.
Put it all together and you grasp the looming crisis.
An unbroken thread connects earlier breaches of norms to ongoing menaces. These were premised on the overconfidence of absolute power.
There is parallel dynamics in international affairs: in territorial invasions, in expansive ambitions, and in the global depredation by powerful corporate entities.
Yet, raw power does not establish right. It produces uncertainty, upheaval, and bloodshed.
The lessons of the past reveal that rules and conventions to constrain the influential also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for increased control and resources ultimately lead to their downfall – taking down their corporations, nations, or empires. And threaten global conflict.
This kind of disregard for rules will plague international stability – and the very idea of civilized conduct – for years to come.
