Read The idiot (1869) by Dostoevsky as a teenager. The Russian writer writes: "I am an idiot because I am different from them. I look at the world with compassion and understanding, and I believe in the goodness of people. But my goodness is mistaken for weakness, and my compassion is seen as foolishness. I am an idiot because I am alone in a world of fools." Prince Mixkin was indeed different. An orphan, he had suffered from minor epileptic seizures, had looked into the eyes of a man condemned to death, and spoke and loved in unconventional ways.
The New Trumpist Far Right antiwoke He treats us like idiots. He has managed to ridicule kindness, solidarity, empathy with the weak, with the different. The "last fool" discourse has won: each individual, each country, must look out for itself first, without any kind of contemplation, and identify external and internal enemies. Not doing so is idiotic. The world is a Darwinian jungle (not of the most adaptable, as Darwin said, but of the strongest).
Trump is the one who wants to command this new world (dis)order. As rich and strong (first military power), he ostentatiously places himself in the center of the board. We have entered the terrain of narcissistic geopolitics. He wants to be everything: he wants to be both a peacemaker (making the victims look guilty) and a warrior (turning trade into a battlefield).
America first? Not exactly. Trump first. Trumpism first. Not even the Republican Party. He is the party. The America of the Democrats is an idiot. Many Americans feel threatened, ashamed, singled out. All the Mixkin have it bad. We are witnessing the apotheosis of contempt, suspicion and division. He is the nation. If we were in Roman times, he would already be preparing his deification. He is granting himself full powers. As Elon Musk says, if the president cannot do what he wants, "that is not a democracy, it is a bureaucracy." Collective life reduced to the imperative dictate of a single man and his small circle. Are we heading towards an absolutist democracy, towards a plebeian aristocracy of billionaires?
But we are not in Roman times, we are in banalized Nietzschean times. Time of passionate and violent supermen. Hence the shameless reappearance of Nazi gestures as an expression of strength, power, action. Hence the immense will to power and the resounding contradictions of Trump, a man who believes himself chosen by God while at the same time renouncing love for his neighbor in every gesture, a democrat who destroys enlightened values, a nationalist ready to persecute half the nation.
In a nation forged by immigrants, he is creating a climate of terror among the last to arrive. In a nation based on freedom, he has threatened to expel from university (and imprison) all students with a critical conscience who go out to demonstrate (but he has forgiven his friends who stormed the Capitol). In a nation that has historically made talent its great weapon of progress, he intends to eliminate the federal Department of Education. In a nation proud of the democratic control of its rulers, he is destroying the prestige of public servants.
It's curious the "common sense" that he says inspires him. Common? Of what community? On what values and consensus is it based? What coexistence does he defend? What fraternity? What has become of the respect for minorities so typical of North American society? Of the liberalism of ideas? Of the freedom to do and think and believe in what you like as long as it doesn't harm the person next to you? Are equality of opportunity, the rule of law, independent justice, and the balance of powers no longer important? His revolution is a full-blown regression.
It's nothing new. The history of humanity is full of a thousand egocentric men who rise to the top and (mis)govern us. Satraps, dictators, emperors, kings and petty kings. Disturbed, disturbing, chilling leaders. The more power they accumulate, the worse. If democracy is the system of government that makes conversation between strangers, between different people, possible, Trump is destroying democracy. Are we the only ones who see this?
