Trump’s Age of Impunity: Cowardice in Congress, Compliance on the Court, and a Presidency Without Restraint
With the support of a group of congressional Republicans who confuse fear for morality and a Supreme Court majority that has grown remarkably at ease referring to deference as "law," Trump has pulled off a bizarre magic trick that has made the presidency the most powerful and least accountable force in American history.
And yes, history’s been screaming the same warning for centuries, but apparently we’ve decided not to listen because it’s inconvenient. The rules and norms that restrain the powerful don’t just protect the weak; they protect the powerful, too. Without limits, the appetite for more, more control, more money, and more immunity doesn’t mature into “strength.” It metastasizes. Eventually, it topples the very people and systems it enriches: the leader, the party, the corporations, the nation, and the empire. Sometimes it drags the rest of the world with it, right up to the edge of broader conflict. A superpower flirting with impunity is the epitome of "stability."
The moral purpose of a civilized society is not complicated: it’s to stop the strong from preying on the weak. If you take that away, you don't get "freedom" or "greatness," but rather a never-ending street fight disguised as government, with the only rule being who can harm whom and get away with it. That’s not politics. That’s barbarism with better lighting.
Trump’s open contempt for legality isn’t some quirky personality trait we’ll chuckle about later in memoirs. It will linger, through institutions, through precedent, and through the habits it normalizes, haunting America, the world, and whatever is left of the idea that civilization means restraint, for years to come.
Nor is this a novel or exotic idea. It’s baked into America’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. It’s also the spine of the postwar international order the United States claimed to champion, the UN Charter and all, built around multilateralism, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. You know: the stuff America tells other countries to respect, right up until it becomes inconvenient at home.
But it’s a fragile principle, easily shattered by anyone who sees power as a toy and accountability as an insult. Keeping it intact requires two things: that the powerful possess enough integrity to refuse the cheap, short-term thrill of domination, and that the rest of Americans have the backbone to enforce limits when they don’t.
Because every time richer, stronger people, or corporations, or countries decide they’re entitled to take what they want from those who can’t fight back, the fabric of civilization frays. Let it go unchallenged, and it unravels. Ignore it long enough and the world doesn’t just “polarize.” It breaks. It slides into chaos, then conflict. That’s not a theory. It’s happened before.
And it keeps happening. The lawless capture of Nicolás Maduro last weekend, an act premised on the swaggering fantasy of omnipotence, sits on the same ugly continuum as Trump’s current threats toward Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland. Different targets, same impulse: consequences as something for other people, power as entitlement, and coercion as policy.
That’s the point. Once you decide the strong don’t have to follow rules, you’re not building a safer nation. You’re building a world where nobody is safe, least of all the people who think they’ll always be the strongest.
Sarge