Un-American America

Trump’s casual & frequent disregard of due process is robbing his country of one of its most admirable traits

When Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel about America under a dictator, he named it It Can’t Happen Here. Ninety years on, facts are stranger than fiction. Teenager Merwil Gutiérrez is detained “by mistake”, then deported anyway, at a time when US govt is already in the dock over the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Universities are bullied, a quasi-governmental office headed by a multi-billionaire with zero accountability shuts down whole departments, the president declares a tariff war, ratcheting up duties on Chinese goods to a farcical 245%, disregarding the impact on American livelihoods.

These actions feel distinctly un-American because they’ve bypassed “due process”, a cornerstone of American governance. The US Constitution mentions due process twice. Once, to limit the federal govt’s powers via the 5th Amendment, and again to check state and local govts via the 14th Amendment. The idea is to ensure that govt cannot deprive a person of life, liberty or property without “due process of law”. There are other democracies and free market societies, but the primacy of due process made America special – until now.

Trump has pointed a gun at that American model, and he couldn’t have done it at a worse time.

China’s rise has restored the bipolar order that collapsed with USSR. Some countries have already hitched their wagons to China, but most aren’t comfortable with its authoritarian ideology. However, if America starts adopting some Chinese characteristics, even in a muted way – big GDP but with frequent disregard for freedom, human rights and due process – that contrast will become less sharp. After all, it makes sense to be pally with the bully closer home. At the end of WW-II, communist USSR and capitalist America were heroes in equal measure, many countries went the socialist way, but the American way eventually proved not just more economically successful but far more popular.
To win against China, America needs to become more American, not less, which means more migration, freedom of expression and respect for law. Trump does not get this, and by his actions he’s right now making China look like a free-trading and saner hegemon of the two. That’s not making America great again.