No Going Back, Part 2
Like treating all cancers, there are only difficult options for free nations to respond to Trump's global bellicosity.
This essay explores themes in Politics. For essays on other topics such as Philosophy, Art & Culture, Theology, or Plato, please see the topical archive at Plato For The Masses.
You can read No Going Back, Part 1 here.
III.
Heads-of-state are not legitimated by internal popular support alone (which Trump lacks anyway). A sovereign is only legitimate if they also act in accordance with the law, both locally and internationally. Since re-taking office, Trump has engaged in a wide range of illegal actions. Free nations should respond to Trump as a lawbreaker, not as a rightful sovereign. Having violated his oath of office and broken the laws of his nation and the international order, he is no longer the legitimate President of the United States.
Donald Trump has violated his oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. He has done this in at least two ways: by violating the due process clause of the Constitution, and by arrogating powers to himself explicitly given to Congress by the Constitution.
The 5th amendment to the Constitution states that “no person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This amendment applies to persons, not only American citizens, and it is reiterated in the 14th amendment. Yet Trump has deported hundreds of persons from the United States to other countries, occasionally even to foreign prisons, without due process of law. When confronted with this fact in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the White House has repeatedly pointed to uncorroborated allegations that Garcia is a member of Latin American gang Mara Salvatrucha, often referred to as MS-13.
That’s just it – they’ve made allegations; they have not presented facts. I’ve had many Trump supporters recently tell me that they stand by Trump deporting people without due process because they know these are dangerous people. ‘Knowledge’ in a legal context means that there is a judicially verifiable record in which either (a) the plaintiffs and defendants agreed to the facts or (b) the defendant is convicted of the allegations by a jury or a judge. Until there is due process—that is, until the White House proves in a court of law that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a gang member—their assertion that he is MS-13 remains hearsay, nothing more. Even if he is a dangerous gang member, like everyone else he is presumed innocent until proven guilty. No one ‘knows’ whether Garcia is a gang member until he receives due process. The White House is effectively asking the nation to take their word for it.
That is not how we do things in the United States. President Eisenhower illustrated this during remarks made in November 1953 after he received the “America’s Democratic Legacy Award” at a dinner in Honor of the 40th Anniversary of the Anti-Defamation League. The President said in his prepared comments,
“Why are we proud? We are proud, first of all, because from the beginning of this Nation, a man can walk upright, no matter who he is, or who she is. He can walk upright and meet his friend–or his enemy; and he does not fear that because that enemy may be in a position of great power that he can be suddenly thrown in jail to rot there without charges and with no recourse to justice. We have the habeas corpus act, and we respect it. . . .
In this country, if someone dislikes you, or accuses you, he must come up in front. He cannot hide behind the shadow. He cannot assassinate you or your character from behind, without suffering the penalties an outraged citizenry will impose. . . .
I would not want to sit down this evening without urging one thing: if we are going to continue to be proud that we are Americans, there must be no weakening of the code by which we have lived; by the right to meet your accuser face to face, if you have one; by your right to go to the church or the synagogue or even the mosque of your own choosing; by your right to speak your mind and be protected in it.”
Rather than meet Kilmar Abrego Garcia face-to-face, Trump disappeared him in haste and then had his Press Secretary make unproven allegations behind Garcia’s back from the bully pulpit. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was denied habeas corpus; he was denied due process. Habeas corpus is the legal right of any person to require a government to prove justification for incarceration. In the case of immigrants being deported, habeas corpus requires they be able to protest their deportation order and ask a judge to review whether or not the government’s action is legal and justified. When you’re hurried onto a plane to another country, you very well could be an American citizen who has done nothing wrong. Without habeas corpus, there is no way to check whether what the government has done is legal and justified.
Stephen Miller, one of the architects of Trump’s deportations, posted on social media that “if you illegally invaded our country the only ‘process’ you are entitled to is deportation.” That comment is a flat rejection of nearly 900 years of Western civilization’s habeas tradition. That tradition says that the government has to be able to prove that you illegally entered the country and that detainment and deportation is an appropriate response (many people enter illegally when they’re fleeing persecution where they came from). Trump’s actions suggest that the powerful should be able to do anything to the weak without accountability. Trump has abandoned the laws that make the U.S. worthy of esteem.
Trump’s blatant violation of the right to due process is an international concern. If Trump can deport a person without due process to a foreign country or a foreign prison, then Trump can deport American citizens to other countries (and there are suggestions that he already has) and Trump can deport law-abiding foreigners. Nations of the world can no longer be confident that their own citizens will receive due process should they travel to or stay in the United States, even if they enter the country legally. Nations of the world should zealously guard the interests of their own citizens traveling abroad.
What can free nations do in the face of this lawless behavior? They can begin by refusing to receive deportees without due process. Consider international law on extradition. Any nation that extradites persons without due process is in violation of the United Nations charter. The U.N. model for extradition requires member nations to be “conscious of the need to respect human dignity and recalling the rights conferred upon every person involved in criminal proceedings” (Resolution 45/116). The General Assembly’s resolution gives seven distinct grounds upon which member nations must refuse extradition. One is if there is reason to believe the extradited person(s) will be subjected to cruel imprisonment or punishment, like that of the brutal prisons in El Salvador. Another is if the extradited person(s) has not received adequate due process. Extradition is not the same as deportation, but since the Trump administration wants us to believe that these deportations are applied to those guilty of heinous crimes, these deportations should be viewed through a similar legal lens.
Free nations should refuse Trump’s attempts to deport. They should allow planes to land, refuel, and return without offloading their passengers. Moreover, free nations should begin prohibiting visas to Americans traveling abroad, especially to senior members of the Trump administration and the Trump family. Since their own citizens are not reasonably safe and welcome in the United States, why should citizens of the United States be safe and welcome in their nations? Free nations should begin unilaterally denying entry to Americans, and when asked for the reason, Trump’s name should be offered over and over as the justification. If Americans want to live in a global community where there is freedom of travel, we must earn it. If we cannot treat foreigners with basic dignity in our country, we should not expect it in others.
IV.
Trump has also violated his oath to uphold the Constitution by arrogating to himself powers explicitly given to Congress. The U.S. Constitution vests the power to assign tariffs in Congress alone. Article 1, Section 8 affirms that “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises. . . . [and] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” For Trump to unilaterally declare the most sweeping and oppressive tariff system in modern history entails that he alone is the Legislative branch. It is a rejection of the separation of powers. He is legislating from the White House rather than upholding the laws established by Congress as says his oath of office.
Trump bypassed the necessary congressional authority to impose tariffs on other nations by declaring an “economic emergency” and using emergency powers vested in the Executive to impose these policies without properly consulting Congress. For the Executive to declare an emergency, there must be some kind of immanent threat to national security. There is no economic emergency; the entire thing is a pretextual lie. If we had a Congress worthy of the name, they would halt Trump’s actions immediately as an unconstitutional seizure of legislative authority. Policy comes from Congress, not the White House.
Sadly, we don’t have a Congress worthy of the name; we have a cadre of Republicans who have completely abandoned their independence as a separate power, allowing Trump to handle all federal roles—executive, legislative, and judicial.
Trump’s lie about an economic emergency largely hinges on his bogus claim that the United States has been getting “ripped off” in international trade for decades (so, including during his first presidency?). He cites trade deficits as evidence of our exploited status. A trade deficit is when a nation imports more goods than it exports to another nation. Even if trade deficits were concerning, by Trump’s own admission the U.S. has had widespread trade deficits with other nations for decades – so what’s the emergency?
An emergency suggests something new and immanent that cannot be addressed through the normal operations of congressional legislation. There is nothing about our trade deficits that requires the exercise of emergency executive powers. Historically, authoritarian and illegitimate leaders often declare emergencies and cite national security interests as justification for consolidating power – that is one of the ways Saddam Hussein centralized the Iraqi government around himself.
That said, trade deficits are not a concern. Trade deficits are a perfectly ordinary consequence of U.S. wealth and prosperity outpacing the rest of the world. We’re so stinking rich as a nation relative to other nations that we can simply afford to purchase more foreign-made goods than those same, far poorer nations can afford to purchase from us. Trump wants us to believe that other nations have been getting rich at our expense, when the truth is the opposite: the United States has been outstripping all other free nations in terms of domestic prosperity for decades. Trump makes it sound like we’re becoming poorer. Yet most of the wealthiest billionaires and successful corporations are here in the United States. If we’ve been getting suckered, how has Jeff Bezos’ Amazon corporation become an international supplier of, well, everything in the context of these trade deficits?
If anything, economist Phillip Magness has argued, “the United States is currently one of the worst offenders among developed nations in placing discriminatory tariffs and NTBs [non-tariff barriers] on our trading partners.” Trump’s tariffs make our tariff regime one of the highest in the world, comparable to nations like Venezuela or China, non-free nations we’re supposedly trying to not be like. Nearly all of Trump’s alleged examples of trade unfairness are galling misreadings of the data.
For example, Trump has famously claimed that Canada has blocked the American diary industry from its markets with a 250% or 270% tariff on dairy imports. His claim shows he has no idea what he’s talking about. Like every nation on earth, Canada has an upper limit on how many goods can be imported into their country per industry. The reason for this is obvious and mundane: if foreign producers could import an unlimited amount of goods, say of dairy products, then Canadian producers would not be able to sell their own wares in Canada. All nations place upper limits on imports to ensure that local producers don’t get edged out of their own local markets. Canada allows the United States to import dairy products tariff free under Trump’s negotiated CUSMA agreement. Only if imports reach the upper limit allowed does Canada then impose a 250% tariff in order to limit imports to protect local Canadian farmers.
Do you know how many times that upper limit has been hit and the 250% tariff imposed? Never. It has never happened. Dairy imports from the United States typically do not even exceed half of Canada’s tariff quota. Of course, now that Trump has initiated a trade war with Canada, they have imposed tariffs on U.S. imports. That means prior to Trump American diary farmers enjoyed exporting goods tariff free, but now that Trump has initiated a trade war they don’t – the very situation Trump is complaining about.
Phillip Magness concludes,
“If Trump truly wanted tariff ‘fairness,’ he would abandon the rhetoric of victimization that he has adopted. The data [shows] that it has little basis in empirical reality. Genuine trade reciprocity would entail the United States lowering our current tariff rates and removing NTBs [non-tariff barriers] to put us at closer parity with our major trading partners.”
The pathetic truth is that Trump flunked Economics 101. He simply does not understand how a macroeconomic system works. We’re ruled by a dummy who doesn’t understand the economic tools he’s using. As Steven Kamin has written for the American Enterprise Institute, “[W]ith unemployment near record lows, our spending on imports is no threat to our economy, and, in fact, it reduces the likelihood of overheating and inflation.” Instead, Kamin argues, “[O]ne of the greatest threats to our prosperity is uncertainty about Trump’s future actions in the realm of international economic policy.” It’s the uncertainty Trump has created in global markets that threatens American prosperity, not trade deficits.
So Trump has violated the Constitution by declaring a national economic emergency when there isn’t one to arrogate to himself powers that the Constitution unambiguously assigns to the Legislative branch. But Trump is also lawless in terms of international law as well, because guess what? Trade agreements are laws too. In an essay for the Cato Institute, Jeremy Horpedahl and Phillip Magness write that in instituting Trump’s tariffs pre-emptively—that is, without first engaging in economic negotiations with trade partners—the “U.S. appears to be violating almost every trade agreement they have signed, including those negotiated by Trump during his first term.” Trump’s tariffs are illegal according to most trade agreements the United States is currently in. That’s why it is called a ‘trade war,’ because just as normal wars occur when peace treaties between nations break down, so trade wars occur when trade treaties between nations break down. Trump has broken the law both domestically and internationally.
Besides all of this, Trump’s trade policies are an existential threat to the global economy. In a recent PBS report, we learned that
“the World Trade Organization said . . . it expects tariffs to cause a 0.2 percent decline in the volume of world merchandise trade for 2025. That’s if the tariff situation remains as it was on Monday. Trade could shrink by 1.5 percent this year if conditions worsen, the WTO said. The ‘enduring uncertainty threatens to act as a brake on global growth, with severe negative consequences for the world, the most vulnerable economies in particular,’ Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said.”
Free nations need to internalize the existential threat that Trump is to the economic flourishing of their own peoples. In the wake of Trump’s self-parodying ‘Liberation Day,’ nearly $10 trillion dollars was wiped from the global economy, about 10% of the world’s GDP. We might as well call ‘Liberation Day’ the single greatest terrorist attack on the world, a profoundly destructive act undertaken by a single individual against every nation on earth and even his own people. Nearly every economist expects Trump’s economic policies to catalyze a worldwide recession. And “the biggest loser of this is definitely the U.S. itself,” says Yuan Mei, assistant professor in the School of Economics at Singapore Management University.
Which brings us to the rub. Essentially, a single man has his finger on a button capable of destroying the economic lives of 8 billion people. No one person should have this kind of power. No one. Imagine our attitude in the United States if Chinese President Xi Jinping had done this – we’d be furious! No one should be able to single-handedly destroy their nation’s economy, much less the world’s. In other words, the United Nations has made a catastrophic error in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in allowing the United States to remain the world’s reserve currency and economic superpower. So much power consolidated in a single nation made it inevitable that someone within the U.S. would recognize the untapped opportunity and exploit it.
The power Donald Trump has over the world’s economy is a national security threat to every nation. The global human community has no future when the head-of-state for a single nation can essentially blackmail every other nation of the world into kowtowing to his economic demands. As President Eisenhower expressed in his 1st inaugural address,
“Recognizing economic health as an indispensable basis of military strength and the free world's peace, we shall strive to foster everywhere, and to practice ourselves, policies that encourage productivity and profitable trade. For the impoverishment of any single people in the world means danger to the well-being of all other peoples.”
We’re all in this together, which means we have to play well together. That is not what Donald Trump wants. Trump is using his tariff policy to try and force other nations to the negotiating table so that they will sign trade agreements that are unfavorable to themselves but very favorable to the United States (though really to the billionaire class within the United States). Trump’s approach is no different from that of the mafia. In the film Kill the Irishman, a true story about Irish-American gangster Danny Greene, Greene is instructed to unionize the garbage truck drivers in Cleveland, OH. Many don’t want to join to the union. So Greene and his goons drive around town, beating them up or blowing up their cars. Suddenly they all want to join! The mafia uses its power to force people into unfavorable economic agreements (the garbage truck union required exorbitant dues from its members in exchange for not beating them up).
The United States is presently being run by a wanna-be mafia don. Trump is using the fact that the United States is one of the world’s largest markets to threaten smaller, poorer countries with exclusion from our market unless they reward the United States with some trade “reciprocity,” the bogus notion that every other nation should buy from us at least as much as we buy from them. In other words, Trump wants to force poor nations to spend money they don’t have buying stuff from us they don’t need in order to make us richer. Trump wants to make the nations of the world vassals paying tribute to America. That’s the real meaning of “America first,” and it’s shameful.
V.
Trump is acting as if the United States has all the leverage, or as he likes to put it, “we hold all the cards.” Thankfully, that is not remotely true. The United States is enormously dependent on international trade and laws, and it is time for free nations to use their own power to arrest Trump’s unhinged policies.
The foremost liability of the United States is our national debt. For decades now, ever since President Nixon screwed the world by taking U.S. currency off the gold standard, the United States has enjoyed almost unlimited borrowing power on the strength of the dollar. American dollars, which are backed not by gold but by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government, have become the world’s reserve currency precisely because other nations assume that there is nothing more reliable than the United States’ commitment to pay its debts.
What we witnessed in the wake of Trump’s initial tariff plan—before the ‘pause’—was a crash not just in the stock market, but a sell-off in the treasury bond market. A bond market is where a nation sells bonds, or entitlements to dollars, that mature in a certain time frame. U.S. bonds can be exchanged for dollars, and since the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, that makes U.S. bonds valuable. But bond holders do not have to wait until their bond’s maturity. They can sell the bonds at any time. The majority of U.S. bond debt is held by other nations. Trump paused the tariffs in response to nations starting to unload their treasury bonds. They had lost faith in the U.S.
Then a terrible thing happened. When Trump paused his tariff policy, the bond market stabilized. That’s bad because it reinforced the fantasy Trump has that the entire world marches to the beat of his drum. He can do anything he wants because at any point he can reverse course and the world will follow suit. The fate of the bond market depends entirely on Trump.
Instead, the coalition of free nations should continue to sell – not indefinitely, but long enough to demonstrate to the world and most importantly to Trump’s cabinet, Congressional Republicans, and Trump’s base that he is not in control. The belief that he is must be shattered, decisively and irreversibly. Showing that the bond market is no longer responsive to Trump’s policy moves will shatter the illusion of his power.
Free nations should not wait to act. Already, rumors are swirling that Trump wants to fire the chair of the Federal Reserve bank and install a patsy so that Trump can set interest rates himself. Remember what I said a moment ago about Nixon replacing the gold standard with the “full faith and credit” of the United States? Well, that full faith and credit is not primarily in the President. It’s in the House of Representatives to approve responsible budgets and debt limits, and it’s in the Federal Reserve to not adjust interest rates wildly or solely to advantage the United States. Exposing both the federal budget and the federal interest rates to an erratic and incompetent President would send world markets into a complete meltdown. While selling treasury bonds is risky, allowing Trump to further consolidate control over the American economic system is even riskier.
Free nations must retaliate against Trump’s tariff wall. But they should not do so with the same broad-scope tariffs that Trump has deployed. Doing so only sinks the world into a trade war where everyone is worse off. Instead, free nations should adopt Plato’s strategy from the Republic of internally dividing belligerent nations by appealing to the working class and punishing the rich. Working class Americans will suffer the most under a broad tariff system, and yet they can do little to stop this madness. So, free nations should deliberately and publicly tailor tariffs to only sanction industries that provide wealth to the billionaire class in America. Obviously, this will affect some working class people, but the primary aim should be to squeeze the billionaires of their billions.
Elon Musk should be their first target. 250% tariffs on all Teslas. Taxes should be imposed on all Twitter advertising revenue earned abroad. All precious metals and computer components that SpaceX depends on for its rockets should be embargoed. Likewise, free nations should heavily tariff, tax, and embargo Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Wal-Mart, and any other major corporation with American billionaires as majority stakeholders. Squeeze the plutocrats and the heat will be on Trump to abdicate.
Getting Trump to relent on the tariffs is not enough. Free nations must not undertake these policies to merely get Trump to back off. They should make clear to the American people that they will not back down until Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are both impeached and removed from office. The goal is to remove Trump, not just Trump policies. The pressure must stay on until we capitulate. Free nations must use Trump’s mafia-esque governance against him.
To further increase the international vice grips, tariffs, taxes, and embargoes must be specifically aimed at the Trump Organization and Truth Social. Trump Org has real estate, resorts, and casinos around the world. Tax them all with punishing levies. Tariff every import Trump Org properties depend on to operate. Scrutinize employee records and arbitrarily deport American employees back to the United States. Every possibility must be considered to crater the value of his companies and properties. As mentioned above, all senior Trump Org officials should have their visas revoked, impairing their ability to run their businesses and broker new deals.
Trump keeps boasting in the media that nations are calling him to make deals in lieu of the punitive tariffs. It’s all bluster, evinced whenever Trump’s financial advisors try to explain his boasts. Still, it’s important to say as clearly as possible: No nation should negotiate any further trade deals with the United States. Free nations should negotiate new trade deals with each other, forming an economic bloc that excludes the United States. These tariffs are going to ruin the existing supply chains, so it is imperative that free nations build new supply chains and alleviate themselves of dependence on the United States. It will be a tough furrow to hoe, as free nations must also not become overly dependent on China, a nation that would love to usurp our economic dominance.
Canada and Mexico need alternatives. Both nations depend heavily on trade with the U.S. and Trump is exploiting the dependence created by our contiguity. Free nations must craft trade agreements that help both Canada and Mexico forge international supply chains that do not depend on their U.S. neighbor. While trade relations could thaw in the future, what is important is that free nations permanently build supply chain and trade alternatives to the United States to ensure that the U.S. never has the leverage for a belligerent President to repeat Trump’s actions.
A major part of the problem is that nations stockpile the dollar as reserve currency. It was always a mistake to have a single national bank handling the world’s reserve currency. Great Britain did it in the 19th century until WWII when the dollar became superior to the pound. Free nations should weaken the dollar by developing a plan with the World Bank to move to a multi-currency reserve model. On such a model, national banks would hold more diversified hard currency reserves, ensuring that no one national bank could exploit interest rates and international borrowing as we have done.
How confident can we be that these strategies will have the desired effect of squeezing the United States into impeaching Donald Trump? I think we can be fairly confident. Trump’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Miran, wrote a policy accord seeking to justify Trump’s tariffs. In this 40-page document, Miran at one point makes the following admission,
“If the U.S. raises a tariff and other nations passively accept it, then it can be welfare-enhancing overall as in the optimal tariff literature. However, retaliatory tariffs impose additional costs on America and run the risk of tit-for-tat escalations in excess of optimal tariffs that lead to a breakdown in global trade. Retaliatory tariffs by other nations can nullify the welfare benefits of tariffs for the U.S.
Thus, preventing retaliation will be of great importance. Because the United States is a large source of consumer demand for the world with robust capital markets, it can withstand tit-for-tat escalation more easily than other nations and is likelier to win a game of chicken . . . . With respect to other nations, if the Trump Administration merges national security and trade policy explicitly, it may provide some incentives against retaliation. For instance, it could declare that it views joint defense obligations and the American defense umbrella as less binding or reliable for nations which implement retaliatory tariffs.” (pp. 25-26)
Free nations need to do the very thing that Trump’s lead advisers are warning they don’t want. Notice that Miran is outright recommending using U.S. foreign security as leverage to strong arm nations into accepting U.S. tariffs without retaliation. All the more reason free nations should “merge their national security and trade policy explicitly” by forming agreements that allow them to develop security and international trade without the United States. Free nations need to read these policy missives by Trump officials and use them to game plan the very outcomes his advisers are trying to avoid.
All of these strategies will result in significant economic hardship for both free nations and the United States. There are no good options. Either we allow Donald Trump to inflict widespread economic suffering while retaining control of the world economy, or we pre-emptively inflict widespread economic pain with the aim of permanently wresting control from Donald Trump. Free nations have had decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union to get off the dollar, build multi-lateral trade blocs, build a true multi-national military, and strengthen international laws to disincentivize belligerent nations. Our present catastrophe could have been avoided. It’s too late now, and there is no going back. Nations need to take steps to move us to a mutipolar world, one without superpower nations.
There is no going back to the way things were because the American people have demonstrated to the world that we cannot be trusted. All nations now know that as long as the U.S. is a superpower, the world is always one election away from catastrophe. Even if Trump is voted out in 2028, what about 2032, or 2036? The American people have shown that at any point we might choose a truly bad leader to helm the most powerful country on earth. Free nations can no longer trust us with that kind of responsibility, so they must take it from us.
Besides, it’s unclear if free nations can even be confident that the United States will have genuinely free elections going forward. Trump has already signed an executive order giving states instructions on how they should conduct elections, even though the Constitution explicitly says, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations” (Article 1, Section 4). While Trump’s EO is mostly virtue-signaling, its real purpose is to soften the resistance against future actions by both his administration and his Republican-led Congress to ensure that they do not lose another election. There is very good reason to think that Republicans are laying the groundwork to ensure that in 2026 and 2028 they maintain their control of the federal government.
So free nations of the world have to assume bad faith on Trump’s part and irresponsibility on our part. In response, free nations should revoke the freedom of travel by Americans; they should call in a significant amount of U.S. bond debt; they should enact tariffs, taxes, and embargoes on American billionaires, especially the Trump family; and they should move to get off the dollar as the reserve currency.
These actions together would decimate the American economy, so this next part is crucial: free nations must never stop binding Trump to the consequences of his actions. Trump has a history of denying responsibility whenever bad things happen. The propaganda narrative must duct tape Trump to his economic outcomes. Remember how effective the Republicans were at tying the Affordable Care Act to President Obama with the slur ‘Obamacare’? That’s what we have to do. We have to speak of the ‘Trump tariffs’ and the ‘Trump economy’ and the ‘Trump recession’ until Trump and the decline of America become synonymous.
VI.
These proposals will not result in a better future for the United States, but they might give the rest of the world a chance to save this precious earth. These proposals will significantly harm me and my family. I write these words knowing full well as an at-will employee with no job security, no pension, and no hope of drawing social security that I am in the class of Americans who will suffer greatly if the world has the courage to stand up to Trump in the manner I’ve prescribed. I am willing to pay that price, because we the United States have wronged the world. In a democracy, government is supposed to be by the people. Well, shouldn’t we the people bear the consequences of our folly in giving Trump power rather than a prison sentence as he deserved?
I expect people will say that my proposals are tantamount to treason, that I must really hate my country to call for its downfall.
It is not true. I love my country, but I also love this earth and all the peoples on it. I believe that no country should be an economic and military superpower. No country should be able to play by a different set of rules than the rest of the world. No one person should be able to improve or crash the world’s economy. No single regime should be able to raise or lower global interest rates to suit their own interests. I don’t want to make America great. I want to make America good. The only path I can see to doing that is to first teach America some humility.
Besides, I’m not the traitor – Donald Trump is. Here I am merely echoing the Western and Christian tradition. Thomas Aquinas writes in his Summa Theologiae,
“A tyrannical government is not just, because it is directed, not to the common good, but to the private good of the ruler. Consequently it is not treasonous to overthrow a government of this kind, unless the revolution harms the citizens of the nation more than the tyrant’s rule. Indeed it is the tyrant who has committed treason, since he encourages conflict and lawlessness in the nation to prevent the people from unifying, that he may lord over them more securely. For this is tyranny, governing for to the private good of the ruler and to the injury of the multitude.” (ST II-II.42.2)
Donald Trump governs solely to enrich himself and set himself above the law, and in doing so he hurts the rest of us. According to Aquinas, that makes Trump a traitor to the nation. Those who stand up to him and organize his removal are the true patriots. Free nations of the world, please help us remove this man who has betrayed us all!
The true mark of loving one’s country is a capacity for being ashamed of it. Think about it: when it was discovered that some of the Michigan Wolverines coaching staff engaged in sign-stealing during official football games in 2023, did Ohio State Buckeyes fans feel ashamed of the Michigan team? Obviously not – if anything they probably celebrated the embarrassing news for their rival. No, it was Michigan Wolverine fans who were ashamed to hear that their team had cheated. They were embarrassed because they love their team and want them to do well and win fairly. So when their team behaves badly, they are ashamed at their behavior.
I love my country, and for that reason I am ashamed that we have disgraced ourselves by re-electing Donald Trump to the Presidency. It is an inexcusable offense against ourselves and the rest of the world. We have made ourselves a stench in their nostrils. We have shown the rest of the world that we cannot be trusted to lead all nations towards mutual peace and prosperity.
Therefore, they should respond to us with a stern swiftness that undercuts Donald Trump’s ability to further inflict damage and that streamlines the impeachment of himself and his Vice-President. We Americans will suffer as a result, but hopefully in our suffering we can learn to be people who are not suckered by demagogues and grifters. Perhaps we can learn to be humble with what power we have been given and put the common good rather than America first. Perhaps we can learn to be people who believe it is better to give than to receive.
Or, we could not learn, and sink into bitterness and resentment of the kind that swept Germany in the 1920's. There is always the risk that punishing the United States for our bad behavior will only make us worse. But just as there was no going back to the world prior to WWI, so there is no going back for us. Donald Trump has permanently exposed the shallowness, irrationality, and vulnerability of the American system. It, and we, can no longer be trusted.