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Nero is notorious because of the fun of playing with the burning of Roman, while US President Trump burned in California's mountain fire and more than 200,000 U.S. people died in the 2019 coronary virus disease.Get fun.
Trump has also been infected with coronary virus after testing.Like Nero, Trump will undoubtedly be considered abnormal, inhumane, and a political figure that may be a lunatic.
Not long ago, the vast majority of people around the world still touched such American tragedies only through Trump's full -bodied lies and nonsense in the evening news or social media.But at the end of September, a hundred million people witnessed a 90 -minute wonders called the presidential debate.In this debate, Trump has no controversy that he has not qualified to become president, and why so many people have questioned his mental health.
To be sure, in the past four years, the world has witnessed a new record created by this pathological scammer.As of mid -July, according to statistics from the Washington Post, the scammer made about 20,000 false or misleading statements.If one of the two candidates has no reputation at all, and even unwilling to participate in the debate, what kind of debate can they have?
When asked about the New York Times, he revealed that he only paid $ 750 US federal income tax in 2016 and 2017 in 2016 and 2017. When he had not paid income tax for many years, Trump hesitated first, and then claimed without evidence.He has paid millions of dollars.Obviously, he gave any answers that he thought he could transfer the dialogue to a more comfortable topic, and no one had the reason to believe his statement.
What is even more disturbing is that he refuses to condemn white suprematic and violent extreme groups like proud boy.He instructed such groups not to act lightly, but to be prepared at any time. In addition, he refused to promise to realize the transfer of power in a peaceful manner, and at the same time, unremitting to destroy the legitimacy of the voting procedure.It pose a direct threat to American democracy.
I grew up in Gary, Indiana, and when we were young, we learned the advantages of the US Constitution Mdash; MDASH; from the separation of independent judicial systems and three powers, to how important it is to fully play a role in the balance mechanism.Our ancestors seemed to create a great system, although they could not avoid the suspicion of hypocrisy when they claimed that all their lives were equal; there was a prerequisite for this equality, that is, as long as they were not women or colored races.
In the late 1990s, I was the chief economist of the World Bank. At that time, we would travel around the world to tell others what is good politics and a good system. The United States is often proposed as a model of the above concepts.
Everything goes.Trump and its Republican colleagues cast a shadow for the foundation of the United States, and reminded us how fragile Mdash; mdash; some people may be more willing to call it defective.We are a country ruled by law, but it is precisely that the political norms can ensure the normal operation of the system.The specifications are very flexible, but they are also very fragile.
The first President Washington in the United States decided to serve only two terminals, and until Roosevelt took office, he created an unbroken criterion.Since then, the amendment to the Constitution has written the restrictions on the term of two terms into the constitutional principles.
Over the past four years, Trump has presented its Republican colleagues and raised the specifications to a new height, which not only brought shame to them, but also destroyed the US system that they should have defended.As a candidate in 2016, Trump refused to issue his own tax declaration form.During his tenure, he fired the chief prosecutor who performed his duties normally, repeatedly ignored the conflict of interests, and made a profit from his duties, destroying independent scientists and critics; he also tried to completely suppress voters and extorted foreign countries.The government is to slander its own political opponents.
Americans now have sufficient reasons to question whether our democratic system can continue to survive.After all, the biggest concern of the father of the founding of the country is that the political incitement may occur and destroy the system from the inside.This also explains why they finally decided to adopt an indirect representative democratic structure composed of the election group and a strong check -in system that should be composed of a strong balance system.But after 233 years, such an institutional structure is no longer strong enough.
The Republican Party, especially the party's Senate representatives, failed to challenge the Chief Executive to the US Constitution order and election procedures, fulfilling its own responsibilities to check and balance a dangerous and weird government head.
We are still facing difficult tasks.In addition to solving the outbreak of the epidemic, the rise in inequality, and the climatic crisis, it is also urgent to save American democracy.Based on Republicans who have long ignored the employment vow, the United States must use law to replace democratic norms.However, it is not easy to do this.When the specifications are observed, they are often more preferably more desirable than law, because they are more flexible in adapting to future conditions.Especially in a good lawsuit in the United States, there are always some people trying to observe legal provisions on the surface, and actually violate their spiritual ways to avoid the law.
However, when one party no longer abides by the rules, a stronger guardrail must be installed.The good news is that we already have a roadmap.In order to adopt the 2019 of the US House of Representatives at the beginning of last year, for the people's bill, it proposed the agenda that expanded voting rights, restricted the party's unfair division of constituencies, strengthened moral rules, and restricted private donation funds on politics.
The bad news is that Republicans know that in today's most key political issues, they are increasingly reduced to a few.The American people want to strengthen gun control, increase their minimum wages, promote wise environment and financial regulations, affordable medical insurance, expand investment in preschool education, increase university entry rates, and further limit the role of money in the political field.
Most people's clear willingness has led to the dilemma of the Republican Party: the party cannot implement the principles of honesty, transparent, and democratic governance while implementing the unpopular agenda.This is why the Republican Party now publicly challenges the United States' democracy, doubles the right of voters to deprive voters, politics judicial and federal bureaucracy, and to permanently lock a few governance through the party's unfair division of election districts.
Since the Republican Party has completed a transaction with the devil, there is no reason to expect Republicans to support any revival and protect American democracy.The remaining choice of Americans is that in the next month's elections, Democrats at all levels have won overwhelming victory.The democracy in the United States is in danger.If the US democracy falls, the enemies of democracy around the world will win.
Author Joseph E.Stiglitz is the Nobel Prize winner, a professor of Columbia University, and currently the chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute.His latest works are the people's, power and profits: PEOPLE, Power, and Progressive Capitalism for An Age of Discontent, which are dissatisfied with the times.
English Title: The Republican Threat to the Republic
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2020.
