Readers often ask us this question. The first and obvious answer is because the United States has always had a great influence on our contemporary life. But the most important reason is because Trump is the president of a democracy (as imperfect as you wish, but ancient and unbroken, and from Catalonia, Spain's political subsystem, we can't really teach many lessons), and the authoritarian, arbitrary, and personalistic degradation that Trump represents is an example for apprentices.
After attacking freedom of expression and academic freedom in universities, Trump has just signed an executive order to end the public funding for public radio and television. It's not a lot of money, because it's funded primarily by private donors and sponsors, but it's the fact. Radio, NPR, is an island without ads surrounded by a sea of commercials, a window to the world in the self-enclosed world of information, a medium with an editorial line that would seem center-left here, with political information along the lines of "this guy said this and the opposite guy answered that." Without questioning anything, it reports on the system in a calm, thoughtful, and non-shouting tone. And that, in Trump's America, sounds anti-establishment and disrespectful to the supreme leader.
Trump's way of doing politics is to create fear, to make everyone feel insecure and force them to shut up. A friend of mine whose son works for a large American company wrote to me: he had to commit in writing not to express his opinion on politics, either online or at work. Some are already comparing it to Germany in the 1930s. For now, and this is no small feat, Trump confirms the truth that democracy is always one generation away from extinction.
