I cannot help believing that the single most impactful thing that anyone could do right now to help the world would be to stop President Trump.
Yes, the man who would take over is equally awful in terms of policies, but I don't think he holds the same fear-factor which is currently preventing decent Republicans from stopping Trump. Until Trump is gone, I see very little hope. And I don't think we can allow humanity's hopes to rest on the Democrats suddenly fixing the myriad political and psychological problems that render them so unelectable.
Too many people are trying to normalise the situation. The situation is not normal. People say any comparison with Hitler is false, because there is (thankfully) no evidence that Trump is an antisemite. But WWII was a global tragedy which killed at least 50 million people and destroyed many countries. Trump is moving in a similar direction. He's too afraid to take on the big powers, so he's appeasing Russia and instead using the threat of US power against Greenland and Gaza and Panama. So far.
He's also utterly transactional in a way that goes against everything Altrusim stands for. He wants to force Ukraine to sign away their raw materials, much the way colonialists did in the past. He sees no personal benefit in helping people in other countries, so he's stopping US Aid. He also has the kind of delusions of competence which would lead him to take on China or Russia if they didn't respect him. He is actively preventing effective AI Governance just because his cronies who gave him money don't want it. He is in every sense both an existential threat and a step backwards for everything EA stands for.
Reading history, how many of us wonder why Hitler wasn't stopped.
Reading history in the future, let's hope future generations don't wonder why nobody had the courage to stop Trump.
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. He and his clever lawyers and judicial picks will find arguments and interpretations that make his horrendous acts legal. They are ready to be challenged by legal means, because they have tilted the field and bribed the referees.
We need a solution. If someone has one, I would love to hear it. But I'm pretty sure it's not just writing posts like this one on forums :( Or angry newspaper columns. We are fighting an evil machine that views the law and the Constitution as, at most, an inconvenient obstacle that needs to be overcome. We need to take off our straitjackets and be ready to fight more aggressively. People need to stop enabling him. World leaders need to refuse to engage with him. Army generals need to reject his orders, because their ultimately loyalty is to the Constitution, not to the President. But also simple bureaucrats need to stop carrying out his illegal orders.
Remember Nuremburg and how the "just carrying out orders" defence was judged at the time.
Millions of lives are at stake.
Those of us outside the US are feeling totally impotent. But I know that many Americans share the feeling of utter disgust and horror at what Trump is doing.
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
It would be amazing if some of the people who downvoted this and or disagreed with it could provide some perspective on why.
Specifically: do you genuinely believe that stopping Trump's destruction of so much that is good and altruistic and necessary in the world is not an important and worthy objective? Or do you not believe that EA's should get involved in the dirty world of politics?
[NickLaing's comment is great, but was based on a previous version that I'd had updated even before I saw his comment.]