Trump's Actions Pose a Threat to Our Social Fabric.

His national and international policies – ranging from the effort to overturn the election in the past to latest actions and warnings – weaken not only national and global legal frameworks. However, the issue goes deeper.

They threaten the very concept of what we mean by.

The ethical foundation of a functioning society is to forestall the more powerful from attacking and exploiting the weaker. Without this, we could find ourselves locked in a state of nature where survival of the strongest prevails.

This principle is central of America’s founding documents. It is equally the foundation of the global system established after WWII advocated by the America, emphasizing multilateralism, democracy, individual liberties, and the legal authority.

But, it is a fragile ideal, easily violated by those who would exploit their influence. Upholding it necessitates that the those in charge have enough integrity to abstain from seeking immediate gains, and that the rest of us hold them accountable when they fail.

Absolute power does not make right. It makes for instability, disruption, and hostilities.

Whenever people or corporations or countries that are richer and more powerful attack and exploit those that are less so, the fabric of our shared norms unravels. Should such behavior are not contained, the fabric unravels. If not stopped, the world can fall into disorder and conflict. We have seen this pattern previously.

Today, we live in a international landscape grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are more concentrated than ever before. This encourages the elite to leverage their position against the less fortunate because they feel untouchable.

The fortunes of a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals is staggering. The reach of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors covers much of the globe. Advanced technology is likely to further concentrate resources and influence even more. The destructive power of the world's largest nations is without parallel in the annals of time.

Enabled by complicit legislators and an accommodating supreme court, the executive office has been transformed into the supreme and answerable-to-none entity of government in recent memory.

Consider this confluence and you see the threat.

A clear connection ties earlier transgressions to ongoing provocations. These were premised on the overconfidence of invincibility.

One observes parallel dynamics in the actions of other powers: in military conflicts, in coercive diplomacy, and in the global depredation by industrial titans.

But, strength without restraint does not establish right. It makes for uncertainty, upheaval, and bloodshed.

Historical evidence demonstrates that laws and norms to constrain the powerful also safeguard them. Without such constraints, their insatiable demands for greater influence and riches eventually lead to their downfall – taking down their corporations, nations, or empires. And pave the way for international catastrophe.

Such contempt for legal order will plague the nation and the world – and the very idea of a rules-based order – for a long time.