The Trump Era isn’t just bending Norms, its Fracturing the Rule of Law and Erasing and Distorting what it Means to be American
In a recent op-ed for The Guardian, Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Tribe, one of the nation’s leading experts on the Rule of Law, said it best: “Trump is erasing the United States as we knew it.”
No longer are we the shining city on the hill, the doer of good, the world’s last best hope.
Professor Lawrence Tribe, Photo courtesy of The Harvard Crimson
Now we are the piggy bank being shaken and smashed by the mega-la-billionaires who view we mere American citizens as a lowly rumble of voices to be ignored. As one recently described their stripping of assets from the population of regular American people who might not appreciate it, as good “bio-fuel”.
Bio-fuel. If it sounds like an echo of the Holocaust, it is.
We are rapidly moving through the initial stages of fascism.
President Donald Trump — he of 34 felony convictions and a moral compass wrapped around his money belt — and his unelected co-president Elon Musk — with more conflicts of interest for that role than a cat has lives — are stripping our federal government of its strength, its alliances, its reputation of service, and its ability to continue as a democracy.
It isn’t just the stripping of budgets and staff. A plethora of what are now hundreds of executive orders are being held back by the courts. This is what has ALREADY occurred, and we await whether or not Trump loyalists are actually going to follow court decisions:
- The destructive and greedy grab of our precious public lands, National Parks, and the parks’ public buildings — which don’t just belong to us, but to future generations;
- The stifling of nearly every aspect of the First Amendment — including the freedom of speech rights granted to all people in this country, not just citizens. This includes attacks on our universities, libraries, museums, public schools, and news organizations;
- The wrecking ball being taken to literally every federal cabinet level department, ignoring science, smashing about in our social safety net, weakening our diplomatic core, insulting our allies, demanding that we annex autonomous regions of other countries (who also happen to be our NATO allies and neighbors;
- The complete lack of transparency as they devour independent agencies from the Smithsonian to the Kennedy Center, to the wiping of our federal websites; quashing true history, and their free expression to represent the diversity of this country, and the effort to enhance equity and be inclusive of women, minorities and Native Americans;
- The willful use of social media to conduct federal policy and in he case of Musk, his extensive use of it to influence the 2024 election, and this weekend his massive use of X and campaign funds to tilt a federal judge election in Wisconsin;
- The blatant flaunting of the Rule of Law, and the rulings of the Department of Justice; flipantly texting out “Oopsie — too late!” when ICE was ordered not to transport immigration seizures to El Salvador, followed by grabbing a university student literally off the street by ICE;
- The just plain stupidity of prepping for a Dept. of Defense armed action using unsecured commercial communications, texting in attack plans hours before the attack, endangering pilots and sources, and then trying to make America believe that this is how the big boys do it.
If this wasn’t so dangerous, so awful, so un-American, Ark Valley Voice might have our political cartoonist draw up a clown show. Instead, what we believe must be done if American democracy is going to survive, was well said by Tribe this past week in his opinion piece in The Guardian:
“In his iconic poem The Hollow Men, TS Eliot a century ago famously wrote: “This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / … /Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Rooted in our past, the anti-democracy virus has reached a fever pitch as it ravages the body politic and revises all traces of our history. It’s a virus we must fight with all the energy we can muster if we don’t want our system of self-government under law to die – not in a sudden explosion but with a quiet whimper.
The tragedy is that too many politicians and organizations are caving in without a fight, leading others to follow suit. With each surrender, Trump and his minions not only grow more emboldened but cement their hold on power by cracking down on all who dare oppose them in court, including lawyers who come to the aid of the administration’s enemies.
Without more courageous leaders – including Republican officeholders who fear being primaried by candidates backed by limitless wealth – and without more bravery on the part of corporate CEOs whose fortunes can be threatened by Trump, elite lawyers whose business can shrivel if Trump targets them, and ordinary citizens understandably fearing online threats and worse, this darkness will be our destiny as we are reduced to mere memories and then relegated to the vast wasteland of the forgotten.”
Before the 2024 election, Tribe said something that remains the north star by which Ark Valley Voice will continue to report this attack on our democracy; “It’s worth leading your life as if justice will matter.”
Editor’s Note: Professor Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School.
This post was originally published on here
