From Trump to Feijóo

I do not know if there is full awareness of the importance of the challenge that American society has made to Donald Trump. The Republican Party's capitulation to Trumpist delusions has cost it dearly. And a good portion of its voters have crossed the line: voters are people – therefore, there are all kinds of them – but they still have a certain point of sensitivity and perception, and are capable of becoming indignant when a government loses the notion of limits and acts with total impunity. Trump cannot understand this because his miserable ego is desperately in need of recognition. But the defeat has been so enormous that it seems unlikely he can choose to forge ahead by breaking the rules of the game. Given the reaction of the citizenry, it is hard to believe that the institutions would let themselves be contaminated. Americans have set the limits of what is possible. And Trump has been left disoriented. Out of dignity, he should go home. Recognize his lack of sense of reality. He will not do it, he will hardly be capable of understanding why so many people have reacted against his delusions and wanted to save the institutions before democracy decayed.

The impact, certainly, is global. In part because the resentments generated by the great empire are many, as a symbol of the extent of the defense of a capitalism without limits. And it questions everyone, everywhere. In Europe, especially, at a time when the right has been drifting towards authoritarianism, with the growth of neo-fascist parties and the reactionary evolution of liberal rights. In the Spanish case, it is evident. The rebellion of American society is a slap in the face to Vox, but also to the PP, which, like a good part of the European right, had accelerated along the authoritarian path to the point of giving full recognition to Abascal, assuming his demands, on the way to a future parliamentary majority.

Will Europe be insensitive to the authoritarian threat that the United States has just toppled? Will the American outburst help to awaken the faded European social democracies? Will it motivate the liberal right in its phase of capitulation? Or will the reactionary dynamic resist, still? The calendar causes the Spanish elections to be a first test of the consequences of the demystification of Trump. And for the moment Feijóo continues fixated, “unmoved in his demeanor”(as the Cara al Sol said).