The U.S.A. Is on a Collision Course With Itself

It would appear the constitution and bill of rights are just paper and not safeguards.

The U.S. Constitution was designed to prevent and control berserk actions by the President and by the Executive Branch of government. Presidents are not kings; they have no Divine Right, and when they commit actions that are immoral or in violation of the Constitution, they must be stopped, or this country will cease to function as a free Constitutional democracy. ~ Pete Hamill, 1972

How’s that working out for you, U.S.A.?

The U.S. Constitution wasn’t drafted as intended to be inspirational wall art or a museum piece; It was drafted with the thoughts of Kings and aspirational dictators in mind. The Founders knew about kings and royal tantrums; what would they make of the country now, with a President who treats the whole country like his personal golf course?

U.S. Presidents aren’t monarchs. They’re the temporary CEO at America, Inc. Sure, they get a nice house, big desk, control of the treasury and the armed forces — but that doesn’t mean they’re allowed to declare themselves the Chosen One between bites of a Quarter Pounder and sups of Diet Coke. Divine Right isn’t in the job description, unless you count the divine right to bankrupt casinos.

So when a president goes off-script — say, tries to rewrite the Constitution in crayon, stage‑manage a coup between commercial breaks, or redefine “presidential library” as ‘branding opportunity at Mar‑a‑Lago’ — that’s when the rest of the system is meant to hold up the stop sign. Courts, Congress, and, most importantly, the voters are there to remind the Executive Branch that America isn’t supposed to be an endless season of The Apprentice. But we’ve got 3 more years of Trump madness, and with it, endless avenues of potentially democracy ending events happening on his watch. No one appears to be keeping Trump under adult supervision. American democracy is looking less like the land of the free and more like a TV channel running 24/7 repeats of Trump telling the nation how great he is, half tragedy, half farce, all pay‑per‑view.

Trump’s cabinet is more sycophantic than the candidates on The Apprentice; even the Kremlin would be embarrassed by Trump’s cabinet and their behaviour. They won’t rein him in.

The once freedom-loving U.S.A. now has combat military patrols cruising through the cities — not because foreign troops invaded, but because the president has decided to cosplay as a 1970s Latin American dictator. SWAT teams are now knocking on the doors of government critics, and let me remind you: the government critic in question could be you for the crime of saying “the president looks like a cross between Mussolini and a tangerine soufflé.” Due process? That’s out, probably hitchhiking to Canada. Mass detentions are in. The precious Bill of Rights is treated like a takeaway menu: the president orders only the parts he likes and ignores the rest. I suppose it’s comforting to know the FBI has the manpower to send thirty agents and a battering ram after some guy on Twitter with twelve followers. Due process, once the keystone of American justice, is now geographically reliant on where you live. Preferably an area that hasn’t been gerrymandered, of course.

The private sector? So private that the government now owns it. Trump now has the power to fire you from your private sector job. Case in point: the federal government bought itself a ten-per-cent stake in Intel and is talking about doing the same to Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Because nothing says “innovative technology company” like letting Trump get involved. Donald Trump's business track record is basically a greatest hits of “How to lose a fortune and go bankrupt”. The Trump Taj Mahal in '91, Trump Plaza and Trump Castle both tipping over in '92, then a repeat encore with Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts in 2004 and Trump Entertainment Resorts in 2009. Trump Shuttle Airlines didn’t quite make it to takeoff, Trump Mortgage forgot to... well, mortgage properly, and let’s not forget the culinary triumphs of Trump Steaks and the refined vodka experience known as Trump Vodka, oh and Trump University, a masterclass in how to get sued. You really want to let Trump get involved in the private sector? Expect your next laptop chip to come with a function that only processes data if you genuflect before an image of Trump.

Meanwhile, media corporations are being slapped with multimillion‑dollar fines for offending the Trumps’ delicate sensibilities. Some poeple might describe him as a snowflake. The First Amendment, once the crown jewel of American rights, has been downgraded to a very expensive insult jar. But don’t worry, crime isn’t being ignored. In fact, dangerous felons are being released back into society — provided they committed their crimes in the president’s name. If you punched out a random person in the supermarket, you’d be locked up. If you punched out one of Trump’s political enemies? Congratulations, sir, you’re a patriot. Here’s a job in government.

And the ultimate irony: all this is justified with the language of freedom and liberty. Freedom has become the moral duct tape slapped across every act of arbitrary power. Apparently, “freedom” means the freedom for the government to run your life, censor your words, tax you a much as they want, have you fired, trample all over your civil liberties, raid your home, and turn Silicon Valley into something resembling a Soviet tractor factory. Anyone who questions this dictatorship-by-tantrum is accused of hating freedom and liberty — in this version, liberty itself consists of bullying your critics, looting your economy for your family’s personal gain, and terrorising your citizens.

For more than two centuries, Americans have clung to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution like a sacred talisman—a promise that individual freedoms are inviolable, guaranteed, beyond the reach of authoritarian ambition. In the United States of Donald Trump, what was already fragile has been revealed as almost entirely illusory. Under Trump’s brand of governance, the myth of invulnerability falls apart. Consider the right to free expression. On paper, Americans may say what they choose. In practice, dissent is met with orchestrated campaigns of vilification, targeted harassment, and an executive penchant for labelling opponents as enemies of the state. What good is constitutional speech protection when the President’s megaphone can stoke mobs against journalists or intimidate critics into silence? The First Amendment may forbid criminal punishment for critique, but it appears to be powerless against the soft authoritarianism of sustained delegitimisation. As has happened in Turkey and Hungary. In fairness, the U.S.A. doesn’t have a monopoly on electing these types of figures.

The same is true of due process and legal protections. Some Amendments might seem to offer a bulwark against government overreach. Yet Trump’s America revealed how malleable these protections are when faced with agencies arbitrarily empowered to surveil, detain, and punish. The expansion of executive authority, the politicisation of justice, and the tolerance for selective enforcement all reveal the hollowness of “rights.” When the culture of law bends to only one man’s will, the parchment constraints evaporate.

And what of the revered “checks and balances”? On paper, Congress and the courts serve as barriers to tyranny. In reality, partisan loyalty and captured institutions render those barriers irrelevant. If loyalty to the President outweighs loyalty to the law, then the formal structure is also irrelevant. Rights survive only if enough people in power care to uphold them. Under Trump, that care was conditional, fleeting and always fractured. This is the most chilling truth: the Constitution was never a safeguard. It is a fragile social contract, one dependent entirely on good faith actors. When such actors vanish, your rights vanish with them.

How much more damage to the social fabric of the U.S.A. can a Trump Presidency do?