It's stupidity, stupid people!

Trump "never reads." Not books, not newspapers: "Not even the one-page or half-page notes they send him to prepare him for an interview." He is a complete functional illiterate. He only functions orally. He is a man of action without reflection, audacious, disruptive. Something that, in a chaotic world, far from penalizing him, has made him a political genius. If in 1992 James Carvill, Bill Clinton's advisor, made the phrase "It's the economy, stupid!" famous, now we could paraphrase it like this: "It's stupidity, stupid!" Out with experts, out with wise men, out with history, out with knowledge... Yes to imperative action that provokes stupefaction, fear, insecurity. Yes to the excitation of prejudices and base instincts.

This is the stage of global power. This is how the essayist and political advisor portrays it. Giuliano da Empoli in the book The hour of the predators (Ediciones 62, in Catalan translation by Josep M. Pinto). This is the must-read book of the moment: a stark account of how the other global warming operates, the shift from multilateral diplomacy—the UN, Davos, climate summits, etc.—to the politics of confrontation and force, which constantly seeks to escalate conflict, both internal—within a country—and external. This politics is the product of the convergence between messianic "tech lords" (Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg...) and the new brutalist, Borgesian leaderships (yes, Cesare Borgia). Although the author frequently quotes Machiavelli, labeling Trump and company as "Machiavellian" seems too sophisticated a description of these new barbarians, the product of the system's failure.

They are the new ruling elite who want to destroy the old world of ineffective liberal democracies to build a new autocratic, technological, ferocious world, ruthless with the losers. "War is back in fashion. Leaders who invoke it win elections. Some of them then take action. In the last five years, arms spending has increased by 34% worldwide. A warlike fervor is sweeping the planet, and it doesn't only affect authoritarian regimes," the author writes. Cyberattacks are commonplace, drones are giving warfare a whole new dimension, and the nuclear threat, which we had wanted to forget, is becoming real again: nuclear warheads, which had been decreasing since the mid-1980s, are increasing once more. In military terms, today "attack is cheaper than defense," something highly dangerous. We are heading into an era of violence. Is the apocalypse approaching?

Besides Trump, Putin and his ex-wife also appear in the book. spin doctor Vladislav Surkov; the Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who is indeed perfectly Machiavellian; the audacious and expeditious president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who so often defines himself as "the most powerful dictator" cool of the Earth," as international observers have noted, validating his democratic victory with 84% of the vote; or Argentine President Javier Milei, with his anti-public sector chainsaw rhetoric. "Chaos is no longer the weapon of rebels, but the mark of the dominant," writes Giuliano da Empoli, according to whom we are facing a new era of limits, surrounded by friends, partners, and family, who laugh at laws, prudence and restraint, dialogue and agreements, consensus, and the rights of minorities (the mockery of wokism (It gives them wings). Things of weaklings and cowards. Their code of conduct is the pure exercise of results-oriented power to end crime, immigration (nothing better than a good political operative), the cost of living...

Are they getting ahead? How to combat them?There will be a Mamdani effect with the return to the classic social democratic discourse focused on people's problems.Da Empoli explains that those who wanted to be politicians, Henry Kissinger He responded to them with Churchill's words: "Study history, study history, study history." Will enlightened, humanistic intelligence ever be valued again, or will AI mark the triumph of the machine over humankind? Da Empoli fears that AI will reinforce "our stupidity" and gives a new meaning to the acronym AI: authoritarian intelligence. The battle lines are drawn.