International panorama: What independence does Donald Trump’s US celebrate?

Because of this, the date gains intense contemporary meaning. It illustrates what there is and what has been lost about the foundations and values ​​of North American democracy that helped shape the world. At the same time, the ceremony is tainted with the certainty that he turns it into a celebration of himself; “Trump rally”, has called her.

To be clear, days ago, in a grand inaugural speech, he suggested that the greatness of the United States was largely due to him and He did not hesitate to compare himself with the founders. “Like those patriots of 1776, he said, in the last 17 months we have regained the power of the political class. “We have reclaimed our sovereignty, regained our freedom, restored our prosperity, and saved our country in every way.”

Academics slam Trump an acute lack of knowledge of general history and that of his country in particulara problem that he himself has recognized without giving particular importance to these shortcomings. He told historian Douglas Brinkley, at a meeting at Mar-a-Lago after winning his first presidency, that he had never read a book about Abraham Lincoln, for example. “I was surprised, because when you talk to politicians, they even invent books. They intend to read a lot. “He just shrugged his shoulders and told me he was a visual person.”stated the historian quoted by The Guardian.

This indifference and ignorance has even had extremes that bordered on the ridiculous. Let us remember when he stated with a confident tone in 2019 that in the War of Independence the continental army had taken the airportsthat is, a century before the invention of human flight. Brinkley’s colleagues such as Johann Neem of Western Washington University say that if Trump were even somewhat aware, he would know that “The American Revolution was a rebellion against tyranny and arbitrary power, which is what he tries to exercise.”

The circumstance tempts us to compare what the Declaration of Independence proposes, a copy of which the magnate has in the Oval Office, with presidential behavior. The Founding Fathers, following the ideas of Montesquieu, designed three sovereign and independent powers to avoid tyranny. The entire construction was based on a deep skepticism towards absolute power and faith in institutions to contain human ambitions, as James Madison summarized.

To achieve this, Congress had to be the primary power. But Trump defends the maximalist theory of “Unitary Executive”suggesting that the Constitution grants him unlimited rights. His attempts to divert funds not authorized by Congress—the border wall among them—or his systematic disregard of Parliamentary subpoenas, in addition to legislate with decree laws, They clash head-on with the idea that Congress is an equal peer.

Trump has insisted that as president: “I have the right to do what I want…There are no limits,” as he told the portal Axios. But the Revolution was based precisely on the rejection “to abuses and usurpations” of the British crown of George III, as illustrated by John Pitney in Bulwark. “Among the main reasons for that condemnation were precisely the real attempts to block or evade the actions of the colonial legislatures.”

The worst examples of these procedures by the president include the unilateral imposition of tariffswhich amount to regressive taxes on American consumers. The Declaration of Independence denounced that London with its taxes “He sought to disrupt our trade with the entire world and impose taxes on us without our consent.” It is worth remembering that in 1773 London approved the Tea Act, giving the British East India Company a monopoly to sell tea in North America with a direct tax. The colonists opposed paying these taxes and furiously threw more than 300 boxes of the infusion into the water in Boston Harbor. That gesture gave way to the War of Independence.

Another of the most important reproaches against King George III was that the British monarch had obstructed the administration of justice. One of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, argued that the Judiciary should be completely independent to protect the freedom of citizens from government abuses. But Trump has publicly attacked the legitimacy of the judges and prosecutors who have ruled or acted against him, calling them “corrupt”, “biased” or “political tools”.

Additionally, he granted mass clemency to those who attacked the Capitol in the January 2021 coup attempt and later supported a failed plan to compensate them. A founding principle of this Charter establishes that governments derive their powers from the “consent of the governed”which is verified in the acceptance of the ruling of the polls. The Republican leader, on the other hand, made allegations of fraud without evidence of the results of the 2020 elections that Democrat Joe Biden won. He also filled the Ministry of Justice with loyalists who have investigated, with the support of the FBI, whom the president considers his political enemies and has issued decree laws against the law firms that sued him. Today the holder of the portfolio is his former personal lawyer.

In another passage, the Declaration repudiates the king for the extraordinary abuse of “transport us beyond the seas to be tried for alleged crimes and deprive us in many cases of the benefits of a trial”. Pitney recalls that Trump, likewisesent migrants to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT megaprison. Federal judges ruled that several of those deportations were carried out without due process. Perhaps even more pernicious, Trump considered suspending the writ of habeas corpus, which would have given the government broad powers to detain people without effective judicial review.

Also in this notable list is a persistent problem of populism. iliberal and of a certain supposed progressivism: contempt for opinion and information. The founders considered the free press a vital counterweight. But Trump and some of his supporters around the world claim that “we don’t hate the press enough”, and the president himself has described the media as “enemies of the people” because they do not align with their post-truth construction.

He has also questioned the notion of the equality of men, rejecting that basic principle of tolerance and antisegregationism. Along those lines, he has sought to restore monuments to Confederate slaveholders who opposed everything the declaration represents. He even eliminated Martin Luther King Day, which called for fulfilling the principles that founded the nation, and replaced it with “Flag Day and President Trump’s birthday.”

The presence of this president with these regressive experiences says a lot about the reasons for loss of influence and reputation of power in this, its 250th anniversary. Also, the plummet of the tycoon’s image. They are the other opaque sides impossible to conceal that the commemoration exposes. The most sad thing is that King George III would applaud this outcome with comfort two and a half centuries after his exemplary defeat.