The Former President's Actions Constitute a Threat to Civilization.
The domestic and foreign strategies – including the challenge to the democratic process previously to latest incursions and warnings – weaken both domestic and international jurisprudence. But that’s not all.
They endanger the very concept of what we mean by.
The guiding principle of any advanced culture is to forestall the dominant from harming and taking advantage of the vulnerable. Otherwise, we could find ourselves permanently immersed in a brutish war where survival of the strongest prevails.
This principle is embedded of America’s founding documents. It is equally the heart of the postwar international order supported by the United States, built on international cooperation, democracy, individual liberties, and the rule of law.
However, it is a delicate ideal, easily violated by those who choose to misuse their influence. Maintaining it demands that the influential have a sense of duty to avoid seeking temporary advantages, and that the public hold them accountable if they don't.
Unfettered might does not make right. It results in uncertainty, disruption, and hostilities.
Whenever entities that are advantaged prey upon those that are weaker, the framework of civilization frays. Should such behavior are allowed to continue, the fabric unravels. If not stopped, the world can plunge into instability and violence. It has happened before.
Today, we live in a society and world with deepening divides. Influence and wealth are held by fewer hands than ever before. This invites the powerful to exploit the less fortunate because they act with a sense of untouchable.
The wealth of a handful of billionaires is difficult to fathom. The power of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace spans numerous countries. Artificial intelligence is could centralize economic and political clout even more. The offensive capability of the world's largest nations is without parallel in recorded history.
Enabled by political allies and a pliant high court, the executive office has been turned into the supreme and answerable-to-none entity of state power in the modern era.
Combine these factors and you grasp the looming crisis.
A clear connection connects earlier breaches of norms to present-day provocations. Each were founded upon the arrogance of invincibility.
There is a similar pattern in international affairs: in territorial invasions, in strategic threats, and in the global depredation by industrial titans.
However, unfettered might does not establish right. It makes for fragility, upheaval, and bloodshed.
Historical evidence demonstrates that laws and norms to check the powerful also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for greater influence and riches ultimately lead to their downfall – along with their enterprises, countries, or domains. And pave the way for global conflict.
This blatant disregard for rules will plague the nation and the world – and the very idea of civilization – for the foreseeable future.
