The day that plunged the United States into a paranoid delirium

A quarter of a century has passed and the horror of that day still seems near. And that of the following ones, when in sleepwalking New York we breathed the ashes of the corpses carbonized and dissolved in the atmosphere.

But a quarter of a century has passed, a long time, and we already know the consequences of that day of horror. The trauma of September 11, 2001, wounded the proud narcissism of the superpower. And it begat the paranoid delirium that, ever since, has afflicted American society.

It is perhaps inappropriate to attribute a psychotic disorder to an entire country. And yet, the collective symptoms are in plain sight. Suddenly, the superpower felt like a victim. The world was unfair to it. Any reaction, no matter how brutal or absurd, was therefore justified.

It is not Donald Trump who has dynamited international law and the rules of diplomatic behavior in force since the founding of the UN on June 26, 1945. Relatively in force, it is understood: six weeks after the founding of the new order, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In any case, certain norms existed until in 2001 George W. Bush declared a "war on terror" without limits and everything blew up.

What until then had been covered up, with more or less effectiveness, or had been carried out sporadically, began to be done in broad daylight and systematically: kidnapping, torture, imprisonment without trial (Guantanamo continues to exist; Abu Ghraib does not). The war without clear objectives and without possible victory (Afghanistan, Iraq), the lie as an indisputable argument (the false weapons of mass destruction), the abuses and blackmail against allied countries and, in short, what we have ended up knowing as "Trumpism", arose from that horrible date.

Americans would not have tolerated the brutal actions of the ICE, the immigration agency, in the current mandate of Donald Trump, if they had not been convinced for years that terror, like evil (Bush spoke interchangeably of "war on terrorism" and "war on evil"), looms everywhere, including their own territory.

30 years ago Americans would have laughed if a president had identified immigrants or some leftist politicians with terrorism. This now seems like a truism to Trump's voters.

Terrorism exists, of course. And jihadism staged many more atrocities after that September 11th: in Madrid, March 11, 2004; in London, July 7, 2005; on multiple occasions by the Islamic State, which emerged from the ruins of the invasion of Iraq. The United States pushed its allies to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that ended in retreat and defeat: more reasons for paranoid delirium.

Now the delusional superpower is mired in a conflict with Iran. Everything is part of the symptomatology of the trauma caused by September 11th. It is necessary to remember the similarities with the trauma of the Hamas assault on October 7, 2023: Israeli society seems to have accepted since then any barbarity by its army against Palestinians, Lebanese, and anyone else at hand to suffer blind vengeance.

In this "era of revenge" (the title of an interesting essay by Andrea Rizzi), the powerful disguise themselves as victims. And Donald Trump, with his congenital incoherence, embodies an oxymoron that very many citizens continue to accept: the United States is infinitely powerful, he says, and infinitely a victim.

The superpower believes it suffers from the abuses of Canada and Mexico, the abuses of the European Union, the abuses of its NATO partners. Consequently, it takes reprisals against its friends while coddling strategic enemies as obvious as Russia and North Korea. In the "era of revenge," fury and emotions prevail over reason.

Of course, current times cannot be explained only by September 11th. There are economic issues (the consequences of globalization, the result of neoliberal policies), social ones (the impact of mass migration), ideological ones (the crisis of social democracy), and technological ones (a handful of tech moguls direct the public debate).

But the today we know began on September 11, 2001.