The Former President's Policies Pose a Risk to Civilization.
His domestic and foreign initiatives – including the attempted coup previously to recent actions and threats – weaken not only domestic and international jurisprudence. The implications are broader.
They jeopardize the very concept of civilization itself.
The guiding principle of any advanced culture is to stop the more powerful from harming and taking advantage of the vulnerable. Otherwise, we risk being trapped in a conflict of all against all where only the fittest wins.
This principle is embedded of the Declaration and Constitution. It is equally the core of the global system established after WWII supported by the United States, built on collective action, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
However, it is a delicate ideal, frequently ignored by those who choose to misuse their influence. Maintaining it necessitates that the influential have enough integrity to abstain from seeking temporary advantages, and that the rest of us hold them accountable if they don't.
Unfettered might does not equal right. It makes for turmoil, disruption, and war.
Every time individuals, companies, or nations that are richer and more powerful attack and exploit those that are not, the fabric of society frays. If these actions are not contained, the system fails. If not stopped, the world can fall into chaos and war. It has happened before.
We now inhabit a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are more concentrated than in recent memory. This encourages the powerful to take advantage of the disadvantaged because they perceive themselves as untouchable.
The wealth of a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals is staggering. The reach of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace extends over a vast portion of the world. Advanced technology is likely to further concentrate economic and political clout to a greater degree. The offensive capability of the major powers is unmatched in the annals of time.
Supported by complicit legislators and an accommodating judicial body, the executive office has been made into the supreme and answerable-to-none agent of the state in the modern era.
Consider this confluence and you see the looming crisis.
A clear connection connects earlier breaches of norms to current provocations. These were based on the overconfidence of omnipotence.
There is much the same in the actions of other powers: in military conflicts, in expansive ambitions, and in the rampant monopolization by powerful corporate entities.
But, raw power does not establish right. It makes for fragility, revolution, and armed conflict.
History shows that frameworks designed to limit the influential also shield them. Absent these limits, their endless appetite for increased control and resources eventually cause their collapse – taking down their corporations, nations, or empires. And pave the way for world war.
This kind of contempt for legal order will cast a long shadow over the nation and the world – and indeed civilized conduct – for a long time.
