Trumpism Is the Symptom of a Gravely Ill Constitution

Trumpism Is the Symptom of a Gravely Ill Constitution
No matter what happens in November, the sickness may be terminal.
GARRETT EPPS SEP 20, 2016

In less than two months, the American experiment in constitutional self-government may hit the wall of history. Even if the disaster of a Trump presidency is averted, this fall’s presidential campaign suggests that the United States Constitution is gravely, perhaps terminally, ill.

Trumpism is the symptom, not the cause, of the malaise. I think we have for some time been living in the post-Constitution era. America’s fundamental law remains and will remain important as a source of litigation. But the nation seems to have turned away from a search of values in the Constitution, regarding it instead as a set of annoying rules.


A Trump victory would render the Constitution as toothless as the Statuto Albertino of 1848 after Mussolini’s March on Rome. That’s not because Trump proposes violating this or that provision; it is because, to him and his followers, the Constitution is simply nonexistent.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trumpism-is-the-symptom-of-a-gravely-ill-constitution/500831/