The fear that controls large areas of the American public under the second administration of Donald Trump unprecedented in the history of modern United States. He clarifies the actions of the fragmenting of insolence against political opponents, opening hostility towards the opposition, and ignoring democratic standards that he intends to use power with less restrictions than before.
It is tempting to reduce the political crisis of the United States to the simple idea that bad options in the ballot box resulted in bad results.
However, the terrifying reality is that constitutional and legal guarantees, which have long been assumed, have proven that they are ineffective. This is because the elite and authoritarian privilege are part of the DNA of the US constitution.
Unemployment and excellence in the United States constitution
Despite the discourse of the noble freedom adopted by the founding founders, the constitution that they formulated was not about freedom and equality for all.
As was originally conceived, it was a very defective document and in support of slavery that was formulated by a group of real estate owners of white males whose primary interest was to maintain their economic and political hegemony. The so -called principles of freedom and democracy are designed to exclude most of the population, including worshipers, women and the poor.
Away from being a comprehensive rights charter, the United States Constitution has devoted regular inequality, ensuring that power is concentrated in the hands of a distinct few.
It is not a coincidence that the United States is behind most of the world in securing basic rights. Unlike many democracies, where constitutions are explicitly recognized by economic and social rights as essential to human dignity, the US constitution does not contain any such guarantees. There is no constitutional right to health care, housing, living wage, or basic economic security. This absence is not accidental; It reflects the priorities of a system designed to serve economic elites.
In the United States, this protection remains far away, which has been rejected as “radical” by an institution that determines the concession of wealth and power over human luxury. It is not surprising that the US government does not scatter any expenses of the military authority, but it refuses to extend the same insistence to social and economic security for its citizens.
Unrestricted executive authority
While expanding a few economic and social rights to American citizens, the US constitution gives the United States presidents widespread power to carry out it as they like.
Unlike leaders in most democracies, the US President has unilateral unique powers with little judicial or legislative oversight. The president can stop or follow up on federal judicial prosecutions, selectively enforce laws, control immigration policies, classify or raise government secrets, overcome the status of the agency's rules, and to purify “non -distinguished” officials – all without meaningful examinations.
Foreign policy decisions, including withdrawing military treaties and interventions, require parliamentary approval elsewhere, however, American presidents can exit from one side and deploy forces that use gaps in the decision of the war authorities without the permission of Congress.
Emergency powers, which require in most democracies, legislative supervision, have not been actually verified in the United States, allowing the executive authority to seize assets, impose sanctions, and redirect money on the mere declaration of national emergency.
In a blatant contradiction with the democracies in which the courts examine the executive transgression, the American judiciary is constantly wandering to the executive authority in foreign affairs even when there are severe human rights violations. An example of this is the issue of defending the court for children, Biden, as prosecutors sought to maintain the administration of former US President Joe Biden for American support for Israel's military actions in Gaza, on the pretext that American aid facilitated genocide.
Despite the recognition of reliable evidence, the court rejected the case, as it was confirmed that even in cases that involve human rights violations, the executive authority is still unlawful.
The leaders of the national security has always been an excuse for the expansion that has not been verified for the executive authority. Trump, like President George W. Bush, has seized this precedent, using it not only for military interventions but also to justify local repression. Under the Strip of National Security, it is targeted by migrants and threatening to criminalize the opposition.
The absolute nature of the strength of the president is also worrying. Unlike other democracies in which the executive compassion is subject to supervision, the United States constitution does not impose any meaningful restrictions on this authority. Trump took this to the extreme, as he gave pardon for political loyalists, war criminals, and rebellion. In the hands of an authoritarian president, the amnesty becomes a tool for undermining justice and unifying power.
Supreme Court role
The US Supreme Court, the judicial entity in charge of what is constitutional or not, played a major role in white excellence, concession and inequality in the United States.
In the case of Pelissi Court against Ferguson for the year 1896, the court submitted a constitutional legitimacy for racist semester, an injustice that continued in the twentieth century. The legal system has not simply tolerated racist subjugation; He supported and imposed.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court routinely canceled the attempts of economic organization, prohibiting the minimum wage laws, protecting work, and enforcing monopoly on the basis that such measures violated the principles of federalism and the so -called contract freedom. These provisions were less about protecting freedom and more about protecting the wealthy elite from democratic accountability.
Only during the mid -twentieth century, especially during the Warren court, the judiciary adopted a rights based on rights aimed at expanding civil freedoms and protecting marginalized societies. Historical decisions were made, such as Brown V. Board of Educe (1954), and Gideon V. WAINWright (1963), and Miranda V. Arizona (1966), and ROE V. Wade (1973), a separate but equal principle of education, firmly trial procedures and the right of women to production. This is among other cases indicating a shift towards a more comprehensive interpretation of constitutional rights.
However, this period of short -term judicial progress has proven. The conservative majority in the Supreme Court, the founding of the original DNA – has returned in favor of elites at the expense of women and minorities.
Over the past two decades, the court systematically dismantled many gains for the revolution revolution, retracted voting rights, eroding reproductive freedoms, and weakening work protection.
The impact of money on American policy has strengthened this reality, ensuring that the government remains full of elite interests instead of voters. The 2010 Supreme Court Resolution accelerated at Citizens United V.
The Supreme Court also played a major role in expanding the executive. There is no more clear place than it was in the Supreme Court of 2024 in Trump against the United States, which has already granted the presidents a widespread immunity of the criminal prosecution over the measures taken while taking office – isolating the executive branch from legal accountability.
The court also granted almost executive control of law enforcement. In the United States case against Nixon (1974), the court again confirmed that the executive branch holds an exclusive authority over the public prosecutor's decisions, while emphasizing that the president and the prosecutor maintains a widespread discretionary power in determining who must be prosecuted, what accusations must be made, and whether a case should be.
Likewise, in the HECKLER V case. Chaney (1985), the court explicitly saw that the agency's decision not to implement a law – closer to the Public Prosecutor’s decision not to file charges – is not reviewed, as it falls within the world of executive appreciation. These cases together strengthened the principle that the executive authority has almost absolute discretionary authority in the public prosecutor matters, from the judicial intervention.
Trump has taken advantage of this entirely. He has publicly announced his intention to investigate and try political opponents, which threatens the founding democratic principle of neutral justice. In constitutional democracy, no individual should live in fear of arbitrary government measures. However, the current legal framework provides little protection. Even if the targeted individuals are acquitted, financial and emotional losses can be devastating.
Fact
Trump is not a deviation. Rather, it is the product that can be predicted for a system that distinguishes elites, maintains global domination, and maintains the presidency from accountability. The fear that many Americans feel justified today, but it reflects a deeper misunderstanding: this is not a departure from the base, but a continuation.
The belief that the US constitution was inherently protected from tyranny was always an illusion. From slavery and genocide of the original peoples to Jim Crowe, the adoption of Japanese Americans, and the red fear, “war on terror”, and the opposition of the opposition against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, the American history reveals that the force is constantly outperforming justice.
The blatant reality is that the American constitution, despite its evangelization in American political culture, is an old and insufficient document to face the challenges of the modern world. He wrote and for the narrow category of elites that could not have imagined a diverse, industrial and globally connected society. The structural deficiencies in the constitution-their lack of social and economic protection, their excessive dependence on the uncomfortable judiciary for life, and its dependence on corrosion funds in politics, and its deep-democratic electoral system-left the country is not equipped to face times in the twenty-first century.
This is not a passing crisis, but the culmination of a constitutional system that has not been designed to protect against tyranny. The remarkable question is no longer whether American democracy is in crisis, but what the public will require to face this sober reality.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editorial island.
