The War of the Worlds
One October night in 1938, when Orson Welles was 23 years old and hosting a radio show on CBS, adapted the novel by H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds (1898). The fake live broadcast pretending that Martians were invading New Jersey marked an era. The story, which began with the interruption of a music program due to supposedly breaking news, followed an anonymous scientist trying to survive and understand the scope of the catastrophe until the Martians were killed by Earth-borne microbes. The science fiction plot was so unsophisticated that the Martians arrived on Earth in large metal cylinders and used weapons such as heat rays and black gas to destroy cities and armies. But the alarm was credible, and for hours the broadcast caused uncertainty and panic.
After the communications experiment came World War II, the atomic weapon, and so many other 20th-century atrocities in which radio and the media—television became popular in 1939—played a key role in the interpretation of power, war, survival, and the manipulation of the masses.
Today's world is different, much more complex, much more connected in communications and the economy, extraordinarily accelerated, and citizens are massively impacted by information as well as by propaganda and spectacle. Subjected to constant impacts to capture their attention, messages must be of an increasingly higher caliber, as if we were drug addicts. Increasingly higher doses to deserve our attention.
In this scenario, Donald Trump exercises the presidency in the same way he did trash television. Diplomatic meetings in the Oval Office become a coven of televised manipulation, a spectacle that destroys the arts of diplomatic relations. Or do you think the leaders of serious countries will expose themselves to public ridicule and provocation in traps set by their sycophants?
Trump has turned his second term into a shameless business that prioritizes his family's business relationships with the dictatorships of the Persian Gulf and implements an economic and trade policy that puts the dollar, inflation, and public services at risk while favoring tax cuts for the wealthiest and giving oxygen to the cryptocurrency market.
Trump has also declared a cultural war against a world that, in his imagination, represents both liberal American culture and Europe.
Amid the constant noise that accompanies the American administration, the great threat is the evasion and indifference of many and those who, out of cowardice or following, act as loudspeakers for a resentful far right that uses power to enrich itself while pretending to talk to workers about the privileges of intellectuals. Politicians who talk about family values while paying the silence of prostitutes, talk about industry while enriching themselves with speculation, and claim to represent the will of the people while encouraging the assault on the Capitol and refusing to recognize the election results. A politician of foreign origin who wants to close borders.
Trump has declared a cultural war, targeting science and intellectuals, and focusing on one of the best and most prestigious universities in the world, which has not bowed to his demands. Today, the invasion is not by Martians, but rather a war between two worlds: John Harvard vs. Donald Trump. One world where knowledge, progress, and the scientific method are central, and another where money is central; a United States open to international talent, or a United States that has withdrawn into itself.
In the midst of this panorama, the strength of American institutions is being tested more than ever, and, for now, it is the justice system that is halting some of the excesses of a runaway administration.
In Trump's war, Europe will not be able to avoid the clash. The Old Continent represents everything Trump despises, and he will try to destabilize it with his domestic allies. Europe is cooperation between countries, institutions based on diplomacy and pacts, an ancient history and culture, also high taxes and a welfare state that tries to protect the most disadvantaged without blaming them for their poverty. Trump has shown that he negotiates by threatening like a Las Vegas casino mobster. We will see if Europe is capable of negotiating together and facing the impact of the war caused in the markets by Trump's crazy antics.