It was already difficult to understand what a sensible voter could find attractive in Donald Trump’s candidacy, other than the taste for a low-level spectacle or the hope of a position in his future government. But since the Supreme Court’s judgment granting him immunity, all the red flags are going up. It is no longer just a question of absurdity. It is a question of life or death for American democracy. This man is a match that we are bringing closer every day to the inflammable body that is the United States and, with it, the world.
Can we believe for a moment that the appetite for power and the capacity for harm of such an individual have a limit? Is the way clear not only towards a royalty, but towards an absolute royalty and why not a hereditary one? We are talking here about a twisted mind, a tyrant and a malefactor, the fox to whom we entrust the keys to the henhouse. As soon as he is elected (because everything indicates that he will be), we imagine that he will pardon himself. That he will constitute a praetorian guard of tough guys treated as heroes upon their release from prison. That he will destroy everything that his democratic predecessors have built. But why stop there when we are fueled by vengeance and narcissism? What personally gives me the shivers, despite the heatwave, is the prospect of the abolition of the XXIIe amendment to the Constitution—limiting the presidential office to two terms—transforming a four-year presidency, however imperial, into a life presidency on the Russian or Chinese model (among others). Roosevelt was elected four times; it would be intolerable not to do better.
But we are not there (yet). My better half rightly points out to me that since anything goes for the sitting president as long as it involves official gestures, Joe Biden would do well to take advantage of it, too, while he can. Not being a thug like his opponent, he would probably make better use of this provision. For the protection of the United States… and the world.
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