The Former President's Actions Constitute a Threat to Our Social Fabric.
His domestic and foreign strategies – from the attempted coup in the past to latest moves and statements – undermine both domestic and international law. However, the issue goes deeper.
These actions 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 less powerful. Without this, we could find ourselves locked in a brutish war where only the fittest could survive.
This concept is embedded of America’s founding documents. It is equally the heart of the global system established after WWII supported by the America, built on international cooperation, popular sovereignty, individual liberties, and the supremacy of law.
Yet, it is a vulnerable principle, often broken by those who choose to misuse their power. Maintaining it demands that the powerful have enough integrity to avoid seeking temporary advantages, and that the public demand responsibility should they falter.
Absolute power is not right. It makes for instability, chaos, and conflict.
Whenever individuals, companies, or nations that are richer and more powerful target and use those that are weaker, the fabric of our shared norms unravels. If such aggression are allowed to continue, the fabric unravels. If not stopped, the world can plunge into disorder and conflict. History provides ample precedent.
Today, we live in a society and world with deepening divides. Authority and resources are more concentrated than in recent memory. This invites the elite to take advantage of the less fortunate because they act with a sense of untouchable.
The fortunes of a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals is almost beyond comprehension. The reach of global industrial giants covers numerous countries. Advanced technology is poised to further concentrate economic and political clout even more. The offensive capability of the leading countries is without parallel in human history.
Enabled by complicit legislators and a sympathetic high court, the highest office has been made into the most dominant and unchecked agent of government in history.
Consider this confluence and you perceive the looming crisis.
A clear connection links previous breaches of norms to ongoing provocations. Both were based on the hubris of invincibility.
There is parallel dynamics in other global contexts: in wars of aggression, in coercive diplomacy, and in the worldwide exploitation by massive conglomerates.
However, unfettered might does not create right. It produces uncertainty, upended order, and armed conflict.
History shows that frameworks designed to check the powerful also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their endless appetite for more power and wealth ultimately bring them down – taking down their corporations, nations, or empires. And pave the way for world war.
Such lawlessness will cast a long shadow over America and the global community – and the very idea of a rules-based order – for years to come.
