The invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro were a publicity stunt that made people forget about Gaza, supposedly under a peace plan that never truly existed. The civil war-like crimes of ICE agents against American citizens, and the threats against Democratic governors and mayors, were publicity stunts that made people forget about Venezuela. The war against Iran is a publicity stunt that makes people forget about the Epstein files. No one remembers the MAGA campaign funding, the havoc wreaked by Elon Musk on public services during his brief but destructive tenure in the Oval Office, or other minor scandals like the multimillion-dollar renovation of the East Wing of the White House to build a recreation area. The constant interventions of the Trump administration's strongmen (Vance, Hedgseth, Rubio) in the public sphere amplify the constant clamor in the US and everywhere else. Trump's Caesarism is frenetic and cumulative. It operates on a series of rapidly shifting sensations, seemingly intuitive, driven by changes of opinion or mood: today I attack here, tomorrow we'll see. Today I insult my European allies, tomorrow perhaps I'll praise them. Today I lower tariffs, tomorrow I raise them. Today I demand the Nobel Peace Prize or the harvest from the unworthy hands of María Corina Machado, tomorrow I start a war. It's not unpredictable, it's fickle. However, its decisions always have a common thread: money. War is big business for the arms industry and for construction companies: Trump is a construction magnate with interests in the arms industry. The way to further these interests is to constantly provoke, from the US presidency, extreme sensations, strong emotions that leave the entire world overwhelmed and speechless. Nothing is as sensational as a war, especially if it could escalate into a nuclear and/or world war. Trump declares war wearing one of his hideous caps, emblazoned with the letters USA in large letters across the front. Ugliness as the emblem of the new imperial era. And more war, lots of war, which means much more money.
(War and warThis is the title of one of László Krasznahorkai's books, a sarcastic paraphrase of War and Peace Tolstoy. The latest Nobel Prize winner for Literature—this one truly deserved—was in Barcelona a few days ago and said a great many valuable things. He said them in a low voice, with a half-smile, like someone convinced that what he has to say isn't so important. Of his friend, the filmmaker Béla Tarr, who recently passed away, he told us that he lived plagued by constant back pain. He replied that with each book he thinks he writes worse than in the previous ones. He also said: "Things aren't going well." He explained that angels used to carry a message, but now perhaps they expect us to deliver one to them. He warned, as he always does, against false prophets. (Constant back pain as a definition of a world).
