Donald Trump has only been president for two months, but the violence with which he acts has seeped into society, strained American institutions, and changed foreign trade and political relations. We've all known who Trump is since his first term, and we can only be surprised by the acceleration and depth of his actions. From his first campaign to the storming of the Capitol and the conviction in the Stormy Daniels case, everything pointed to Trump's autocratic ways: how he celebrated violence against protesters during rallies; how he sought to dehumanize and discredit the press; his threats to use presidential power against opponents; his hateful language and subliminal racist messages; his images that conflated money, corruption, globalization, and power; his contempt for verifiable facts and democratic rules; how he confused public and private interests; and his praise of tyrants.
The strength of the reactionary platform on American institutions can be summed up in the grave words of the former director of the Washington Post Martin Baron: "Democracy is on the ropes in the United States." In a conversation with ARA, Baron admits that "America's democratic institutions are more fragile than we thought" and that Trump's personality and manner of exercising power bring him dangerously close to the autocrats. Baron, a seventeen-time Pulitzer Prize winner, affirms that the American president "has exceeded the limits of his constitutional powers" and demands to see how the Supreme Court acts. The big question, still unanswered, is whether the high court, now with a conservative majority, will act as a dam and whether American democracy will hold.
The traditional balancing mechanisms between institutions are beginning to leak: both chambers support Trump, the Republican Party has disappeared as such and has become the personalist MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, the Democrats are unsure of their strategy or leadership, both economically and in terms of their credibility.
Baron, a man who has built his great prestige with caution and precision, claims that Trump is a potential autocrat and drives home the point with irony: "I think when some people say he wants to be king, they underestimate his intentions. He really wants to be emperor."
If the judiciary is under attack, the opposition is missing, Musk has access to privileged information, and the administration is being dismantled based on ideological criteria rather than just public efficiency, independent journalism faces great difficulties.
The major platforms have infinite advertising space that competes with that of traditional media, and generative AI allows them to generate informative content without linking to the media from which the information comes. At the same time, the media compete on the networks on equal access with pseudo-media and propagandists fueled by opaque interests. The result is that the threat to economic sustainability is compounded by Trumpism's contempt for the press that publishes things it doesn't like.
In the face of this, Baron remains steadfast in his vision, which he already clearly defined when Trump was attacking dissident journalists in his first term. Then, he uttered the great phrase: "We are not at war with the government. We are working." But the steadily worsening attacks on journalists, with insults and multimillion-dollar lawsuits to bring them down, has led some to call for a shift to crusading journalism. Baron does not budge. "Unflappable, polite, serene, and detached—we must deliver intelligent news coverage—to avoid being disrupted. Show that the work of journalists is real and relevant, and not mere passing entertainment. Preaching, interrupting, and leaving the room are not in the journalist's handbook," he wrote in Facing power (Sphere Books). Baron reminds us that the mission—not the war—of the journalist is "to offer the public the information it needs and deserves to have in order to govern itself," and adds: "We are not stenographers, we are journalists; we are not activists, we are journalists. We have to maintain our independence and, regardless of the government, we must do our work with honesty and precision."
In the bookHow democracies die(2018), Harvard professors Levitsky and Ziblatt warned: "We should be concerned when a politician rejects the rules of the democratic game in word or deed, denies the legitimacy of his opponents, tolerates or encourages violence, or is perceived as willing to restrict the civil liberties of others." Should we talk about the mote in the eyes of the US or reflect on our own beams in Catalonia and Spain? That will be another article.
