The Former President's Actions Pose a Threat to Civilization.
His domestic and foreign strategies – from the effort to overturn the election in the past to current moves and statements – weaken not only national and global jurisprudence. But that’s not all.
These actions endanger the core idea of a civilized world.
The moral purpose of civilized society is to forestall the more powerful from attacking and exploiting the vulnerable. Failing that, we would be trapped in a state of nature where survival of the strongest could survive.
This principle lies at the center of America’s founding documents. It’s also the foundation of the postwar international order advocated by the United States, which stresses international cooperation, popular sovereignty, human rights, and the legal authority.
Yet, it is a fragile ideal, frequently ignored by those who choose to misuse their authority. Preserving it requires that the influential have enough integrity to avoid seeking immediate gains, and that society demand responsibility when they fail.
Unfettered might does not make right. It results in turmoil, chaos, and hostilities.
Whenever individuals, companies, or nations that are richer and more powerful target and use those that are weaker, the structure of our shared norms frays. If such aggression are allowed to continue, the system fails. Without intervention, the world can descend into disorder and conflict. We have seen this pattern previously.
Our current reality is a international landscape with deepening divides. Political and economic power are more concentrated than in recent memory. This invites the powerful to exploit the weaker because they perceive themselves as untouchable.
The wealth of a small group of tycoons is difficult to fathom. The influence of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace spans numerous countries. Artificial intelligence is could further concentrate wealth and power even more. The destructive power of the leading countries is without parallel in the annals of time.
Empowered by complicit legislators and a pliant high court, the executive office has been turned into the supreme and answerable-to-none agent of state power in the modern era.
Combine these factors and you see the threat.
An unbroken thread links past transgressions to ongoing menaces. These were based on the overconfidence of invincibility.
You see a similar pattern in international affairs: in wars of aggression, in coercive diplomacy, and in the global depredation by industrial titans.
However, unfettered might does not make right. It makes for fragility, upheaval, and armed conflict.
Historical evidence demonstrates that frameworks designed to check the powerful also protect them. Absent these limits, their relentless pursuit for greater influence and riches eventually lead to their downfall – taking down their enterprises, countries, or domains. And pave the way for international catastrophe.
This kind of disregard for rules will cast a long shadow over international stability – and indeed civilized conduct – for a long time.
