Trump, erase the memory

Currently, the Oval Office "walk of fame" in the White House includes portraits of all former presidents, with the exception of Donald Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, whose portrait is displayed only with his signature. Trump has removed Biden's portrait. He has also deleted material linking him to the Epstein files. Throughout his public career, Trump has deleted digital content he himself posted, including tweets and social media posts, and in some cases, he has removed or ordered the removal of content from platforms connected to his political or presidential activities. All of this demonstrates a personalistic and unilateral power, which is a clear symptom, in my opinion, of his megalomania. Trump wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize; he wants to go down in history as the greatest US president, no matter the cost, even if it means erasing history, and this has a name. damnatio memoriaeAkhenaten, Caligula, Nero, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, and many others before and after these figures put it into practice. This stems from an exacerbated megalomania as a symbolic device of grandeur. The Genealogy of MoralityNietzsche addresses how historical memory is constructed and manipulated to maintain hierarchies of power, which connects conceptually with the idea of erasing or rewriting history from a personalistic perspective. Megalomania stems from a self-attribution of grandeur born from the belief that one is historically necessary, as in the case of Trump and many other current high-ranking officials. The American president wants to leave his mark on history, not on the moon, but in the US and also throughout the world (and he feels that world is too small for him!).

Trump has managed to connect with a segment of the American population. He has done so by employing an emotional economy of politics that doesn't require a shared project and strategy, but rather ingredients fueled by a clear resentment of the past and the realization of the loss of a certain America—elements that have led to democratic disaffection, eroded by far-right policies that feign loyalty. In short, he has turned power into private property (although many Americans who voted for him don't quite see it that way, and some are even among those deported). For Hannah Arendt, this would no longer be power, because it wouldn't have arisen from sharing the same public space, a common project, and shared objectives. Moreover, when this private power we are discussing weakens or disappears, what emerges is not more power, but violence. From this perspective, political megalomania is not a sign of strength, but a symptom of the loss of real power, and it is very, very dangerous. We could even go so far as to say that megalomania is profoundly anti-political and becomes a spectacle. Trump, as a megalomaniac, feels the need to erase something every day. In the words of Michel Foucault, we could say that he is megalomaniacal because he needs to constantly stage himself, to make a spectacle of himself and the inviolability of his thinking on the international stage, which watches him in awe. But, however much he might one day want to, all of this, unfortunately, we will not be able to erase.