Will the U.S. be able to rescue its own democracy?
“… I’m a very innocent man…» says Donald Trump as he leaves the New York courthouse where he was found guilty of 34 counts of fraud — The statement is reminiscent of Alberto Fujimori’s famous «I am innocent!» after being accused of worst charges — It is very likely that Judge Juan Merchan will not impose effective imprisonment against Trump since the maximum sentence is only 4 years and the subject has no criminal record. Moreover, this legal situation is unprecedented in the history of the United States the Constitution and laws; it is the first time that a former president has been criminally convicted and neither the Constitution nor the laws contemplate a scenario like the current one. The verdict and its consequences are entirely in the hands of the judge. Trump will have the right to appeal and his electoral competition for re-election remains in place. This is an enormous moral paradox for a country whose democratic and economic system is in visible decline.
Why is that the first[1] and greatest democracy in the civilized world in this agonizing trance? First, as Levitzky and Ziblatt (2018) explain, the U.S. political system does not detail all the rules that have been in place for 237 years; Most of the time it is based on unwritten traditions and interpretations of the justice system. In 2016, GOP senators blocked the appointment of a replacement judge appointed by President Barack Obama.
«As we have seen, the Senate had always applied restraint in the exercise of its function as an advisory and approving body to the justices of the Supreme Court: since 1866, whenever a president had taken steps to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court before the election of his successor, he had been permitted to do so.» [2]
The senators broke an unwritten rule underpinned by tradition and this effectively began the dismantling of democratic institutions. It could be said that it marks the beginning of «Lawfare«, that is, the «war of the law» supported by unethical lawyers, who today abound in political circles.
The Founding Fathers of the United States, who outlined the democratic norms of the new Nation, never imagined that a man like Donald Trump would become president. Not even in the wildest discussions of the «Federalist Papers[3]» contemplated the choice of a subject with narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial, paranoia, among others,[4]. Even his own niece, Mary Trump, wrote a book in which she describes the origin of her emotional problems[5]. The most dangerous thing for democracies is that the model seems to be replicated in several countries such as Argentina with Milei; Peru with López Aliaga, Fujimori and Humala; El Salvador with Bukele, etc. societies minorities inclined to believe in authoritarian and autocratic presidents and leaders. How do individuals with these characteristics come to power? This is the subject of another study.
It is no coincidence that that same year, 2016, the political crisis began in Peru. It is no secret, but very little studied, that the international political relations of the Peruvian «ultra-right wing»[6] with radical groups of the same ideology such as sectors of North American republicanism and movements such as Vox in Spain. In general, they advocate the seizure of power no matter how it is achieved; These are the principles of the most vulgar Machiavellianism.
When the rules of democracy are replaced with Manichean legal interpretations, the exploitation of legal loopholes, the takeover and use of state institutions for sectoral political purposes, and the attack on political actors through an obviously lying propaganda machine, democracies suffer and disappear.
The United States has an opportunity to correct its threatened democracy. The trial of Donald Trump should be a clarion call to awaken us from the authoritarian slumber that is beginning to take the world by storm. America’s global and democratic leadership must help stop the advances of autocratic powers such as China, Russia, Iran and their satellites; The rearrangement of global geopolitics is moving towards the formation of regional blocs that will inevitably end in a new world conflagration.
Societies must understand that democracy, real democracy, ensures dialogue and peace. If voters prefer to elect a psychotic autocrat, then the extinction of humanity will be more than assured.
[1] The first democracy was the Greek and then subsisted during the Roman Republic; It disappeared during the Empire. Democracy reappeared in 1787 with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
[2] Levitsky, Steven; Ziblatt, Daniel. How Democracies Die (Ariel) (pp. 167-168). Editorial Ariel. Kindle Edition.
[3] The Federalist, commonly known as the Federalist Papers, is a series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison between October 1787 and May 1788. The essays were published anonymously, under the pseudonym «Publius», in several New York state newspapers of the time.
[4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/president-donald-trump
[5] Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. Mary Trump.
[6] The term «ultra-right wing» defines radical and anti-democratic groups that vie for power without the ethics required for the functioning of a healthy democracy. The political right, democratic and institutionalist, does not have to suffer the discrediting of these radical groups.
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