A Redditor explains why we should all be worried by President Trump

Reddit user VStarffin talks about why President Donald Trump is a dangerous President.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again, because its more and more and more clear every day. Something is happening here that people really don't want to face up to, which is the fact that we elected someone who really doesn't give a shit about the rule of law. And this interview with this authoritarian carbuncle is hammering it home.

This was one of the things which most worried me about Trump during the primary season, and its one thing which really set him apart from other Republicans. Trump never even pretending to care about civic virtues. He never extolled the virtues of democracy, of freedom, of law, of the constitution. He never said anything good about these things, because he doesn't care about that.

That's genuinely strange in American politics. Even people I despise - like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul - really seem to care about law and the constitution, as ideas. As things to refer to. If people remember back to 2008 and 2012, people who mock Romney for his weirdly pastoral homilies to the virtues of American goodness and the blessing that was our law and our constitution. It was funny. But at least Romney cared about it as an idea. Even Bush cared about it - we all remember how the White House Counsel's office would write these memos talking about how torture was legal. While many of us saw that as appalling, the Bush administration at least recognized that law is important. And if you want to do bad shit, you at least need to justify it in the context of the law. Because the law, the constitution, our civic norms - that's foundational.

People need to understand that Trump is a genuine abberation here, and a staggeringly dangerous one.

Law doesn't just happen. It doesn't just run on its own. The existence of a legal system only matters if the people in charge of it actually care about it. Part of the success of democracy is that, historically, it has fostered a process whereby the people who are put in charge of institutions have a respect for the rule of law, and are bound by it - both at a moral level and institutionally.

This simply doesn't work if you elect people who don't give a shit. If you put someone in charge of the police, in charge of the military, in charge of the very organs of state power, who doesn't care about the rule of law, and appoints his deputies and their deputies on that basis, then the rule of law basically doesn't matter. There's nothing a judge or a legislature can do.

Liberal Americans, of which I consider myself a proud member, don't seem to understand the extraordinary danger staring them in the face here.

The wolves are in the house. We have had this process set up for centuries aimed at keeping the wolves out. But we let them in. And we have no idea how to get them out.