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I wrote this post one month ago, it received minus 29 votes and 6 x's.
Do people still feel the same way? Or are you now realising that this man is trying to turn the US into his own personal Russia? That there is a model for this that he is following - look at Turkey or Poland or Hungary or Slovakia or Brazil or Argentina or Venezuela. All slighly different, but similar in the way that an apparently stable, mature democracy was hijacked by a populist movement and eventually became an authoritarian state where the constitution and the rule of law were gradually replaced by the whims of one individual.
I spent some time in Venezuela when Chavez was in power, and it is scarily similar to the US right now. At the time, it was early in Chavez's rule, the economy was still working, the country was rich although with a lot of terrible poverty and many people, even educated people, supported Chavez's vision of a more equal society. But now the country has been destroyed.
I have read a wonderful novel, Europe Central, by William Vollmann, which describes what it was like to live under Stalin. So much parallels what's happening in the US today, from punishing people for expressing the "wrong" opinions, to, for example the way Stalin was the person who decided if Shostakovich's latest works were acceptable or not - just like the way Trump is taking over the Kennedy Center.
And this is happening to the most powerful country in the world, the country that used to be the good guys in a world where Russia and China support so much that is bad.
To me this is utterly terrifying. And I'm not sure why EA's don't see this as a problem.
- Is it that EA's are secretly libertarians who actually think that some of what Trump is doing is good?
- Or is it that we rather focus on narrow problems that seem more tractable, and leave the global political problems to others?
- Are those of us in Europe missing something?
Could anyone enlighten me?
I am suggesting that in this case there is "there is no ethical justification for causing the death of one 73-year-old man..."
1) I still believe in the legitimacy of American democracy - I don't it has failed yet on a large scale. Encouraging assasinating a leader democratically elected undermines the whole democracy and gives legitimacy to Trump's supporters in possible future anti-democratic actions. The future harm caused to democracy could greatly overshadow any possible short term gain.
2) This would set a terrible precedent for the future and make justifying violence vs. leaders easier across the world. Non-violent norms towards leaders are super important to keep intact - Not just for America but the rest of the world as well.
3) There are so many other non-violent options which have not been taken to resist here, even though they seem have sadly faded into obscurity these days. Martin Luther King and co. stood against tyranny arguably worse than Trump's through massive non-violent protests, harnessing the rightness of his position and the will of the masses to create change.
I respect approaches on this front like that of Bonhoeffer. I think political situations need to be disastrous and non-reversible through other means before these kind of extreme actions are even considered. It was many years into Hitler's regime before Bonhoeffer even considered this kind of drastic action - we are barely a month into Trump's.
I also disagree with this "But it's becoming ridiculous to work on our initiatives to help climate and to fight poverty and disease and so on while we have Mr. Trump in the White House actively and vindictively making them worse far faster than we can fix them." How is saving lives ridiculous, regardless of what others are doing? I'll keep trying to save them on my end, and I doubt the white house can make the situation worse faster than we can fix it. USAID is a big factor, but still a small percentage global aid and development at the moment - and an even smaller percentage of cost-effective aid. Its not ideal but we can manage without it.
I'm sure there's much more too, that's just my top-of-head thoughts.
Hi Nick,
I fully agree with you. In fact, after I re-read the post, I realised I urgently needed to edit it. I had intended the idea of actual assassination to be provocative, but instead it read as if I was actively proposing it.
What I'm hoping for is, indeed, non-violent options, protests, etc.
What I'm objecting to, though, is him feeling he can break laws and accepted conventions at will, but everyone else blindly following them to enable him. For example, this is the moment when the EU could take a strong, moral stance. We could propose, in the short term, to literally replace the US - fund US Aid, pay the workers, etc., which could be both helpful for those who need help and a really powerful rebuke of Trump. But we could also just refuse to treat him seriously.
For example, I'm Irish. On March 17th, St Patrick's Day, traditionally Irish leaders visit the US president and give him some shamrock. Many Irish people want us to skip the visit this year, and to instead make a very public point about wanting nothing to do with Mr. Trump - while still having massive respect for all the great things the US stands for. But it looks like it will go ahead as normal, he'll get a nice photo-op, and everything will seem normal.
It's not normal. We shouldn't normalise it.
But I totally agree with you, assassination is not the literal answer. Hopefully you are one of the few people who read it before I edited it :D
Cheers
Denis