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His internal and external initiatives – from the attempted coup previously to current moves and threats – undermine not only domestic and international legal frameworks. The implications are broader.

These actions threaten the core idea of civilization itself.

The guiding principle of any advanced culture is to stop the more powerful from attacking and exploiting the weaker. Without this, we risk being locked in a brutish war where survival of the strongest could survive.

This concept is central of the Declaration and Constitution. It’s also the heart of the global system established after WWII supported by the US, emphasizing international cooperation, popular sovereignty, individual liberties, and the legal authority.

But, it is a vulnerable construct, easily violated by those who seek to abuse their influence. Preserving it demands that the influential have a sense of duty to abstain from seeking temporary advantages, and that the public demand responsibility when they fail.

Unchecked strength is not right. It leads to turmoil, disruption, and hostilities.

Every time individuals, companies, or nations that are advantaged prey upon those that are less so, the structure of society frays. Should such behavior are allowed to continue, the system fails. Allowing it to persist, the world can fall into disorder and conflict. We have seen this pattern previously.

We now inhabit a global community with deepening divides. Influence and wealth are increasingly centralized than in recent memory. This creates conditions for the powerful to take advantage of the less fortunate because they act with a sense of above the law.

The fortunes of certain tycoons is almost beyond comprehension. The power of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace spans numerous countries. Artificial intelligence is poised to centralize resources and influence to a greater degree. The military might of the world's largest nations is unprecedented in recorded history.

Supported by complicit legislators and a pliant supreme court, the presidency has been transformed into the most powerful and unaccountable agent of state power in history.

Combine these factors and you grasp the threat.

A clear connection connects earlier breaches of norms to current menaces. Both were premised on the arrogance of invincibility.

One observes much the same in the actions of other powers: in wars of aggression, in expansive ambitions, and in the rampant monopolization by massive conglomerates.

However, raw power does not make right. It produces instability, revolution, and armed conflict.

Historical evidence demonstrates that frameworks designed to constrain the influential also shield them. Absent these limits, their endless appetite for increased control and resources eventually cause their collapse – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk global conflict.

Such lawlessness will haunt international stability – and indeed civilized conduct – for the foreseeable future.