This weekend we've once again felt the vertigo of living in a world hanging by a thread, with Israel's attacks on Iran and the assassination of a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota.
To complete the picture, Trump has treated himself to a military parade in Washington. Parading soldiers in front of the White House was an exaggeration as bold as the lines of his markers, because the military is an omnipresent implicit element in American life. I still remember the day the commander of a plane asked us to applaud a group of soldiers on board (and everyone applauded), and how during NBA basketball timeouts they would have wounded soldiers in Afghanistan salute to review the crowd's applause.
A parade is always a show of force, and since the world knows quite well what the greatest military force is, it is evident that Trump has shown his troops to his people, just these days that he has deployed marinas to suppress demonstrations. The response has been commensurate. With their proven ability to say everything in a couple of monosyllables, the Americans who have demonstrated against Trump have chosen the expression "No kings" [No kings]. Americans have been independent since the day they expelled a king from their lives, so that the philosopher Thomas Paine, when asked where the king was in the newly created country, replied: "In absolute monarchies, the king is the law. But now, in America, the law is king." When the presidency itself is a source of chaos, when Trump plays king, what he risks is 250 years without capricious monarchs and arsonist Neros.
