Secular blasphemy

Taking the name of the vain people. We could call it secular blasphemy. It's a cyclical political phenomenon that has often led to tragic experiences, including fascism. Now we're in the process of returning, with Donald Trump as commander-in-chief, increasingly delighted by his display of an authority that claims to be beyond all limits. He—in the name of the people—decides for everything and everyone: he sets the tariffs he imposes and those he wants other countries to impose on him. A completely unempathetic being, he believes the world begins and ends with his figure: a body with a yellow hairdo that walks stepping on others and parades its bulk with an arrogance that pretends to tell us everything begins and ends with him.

The norms of the democratic system are irrelevant: Trump feels entitled to ignore anything that bothers him. So much so that, right at the beginning of his second term, he's already explaining how he'll obtain a third, something prohibited by law. He announces his objective assuming that no one has the right to object, and from day one, he has done nothing but weaken democratic institutions. Starting with the systematic denial of the autonomy of the judiciary.

So he is president—and it is hard to understand why American institutions would allow it—carrying a backpack of judicial rulings on his shoulders. In his opinion, neither the judiciary nor the legislative branch has any right over him, because he has the legitimacy of the people. This is an argument with which all dictators—those who have come to power by force and those who have come to power by vote—seek to protect a presumed immunity. Thus, with Trump, American democracy is in a moment of suspension in which everything wobbles at his pace, and not even the Democratic Party seems capable of coming out to fight. It is no surprise that the only individual of his kind who accompanied him, Elon Musk, is already on his way out. Trump himself has anticipated this, as if to make it clear that in this case, too, he has the final say. He walks, and whoever doesn't follow him derails.

However, the weak point of these nihilistic delusions, of this belief that everything is permitted, is that, once they are entrenched in their fantasy, they prematurely believe that the adversary has already been deactivated, and they end up losing their sense of reality until they become trapped in a world they had trapped. The way Putin teases him and confuses him with the war in Ukraine is clear proof. Nihilism makes you lose sight of the world, because if there's one thing that characterizes human experience, it's that not everything is possible. Denying this reality is the autocrat's weak link. The despot, insensitive to the limits of the possible, can end up trapped in the authoritarian delirium that was supposed to be definitive, drowned in his own fantasy. Could it be the economic onslaught with which he has fallen this time?