WHy exactly the new presidency of Donald Trump so disorienting? Until now, the explanations have tended to focus on his maniac rhythm, his contempt for political conventions and his flagrant subversion of one of the most robust democracies in the world.
But all these elements were also present in his first presidency. Meanwhile, other characteristics of his two terms, such as his cult personality, Immigrant scapegoat And the accusation that the liberal elites have caused a national drop, are standard practices for strong hard men and have been for at least a century.
However, he confuses and hurts people, adversaries and more neutral observers, politics and voters, Americans and foreigners. There is a reason under-explored to this. The presidency of Trump, and in particular his second term, is a deeply paradoxical project. In some ways, it is an epic political fantasy, a promise that every dream of American reactionaries and nationalists can be quickly accomplished. But in other respects, it is a frightening intrusion of reality – in the image tinged with rose that many liberals still have the functioning of America and the way America relates to the rest of the world .
The central hypothesis of Trump’s fantasy is that in his remaining four-year mandate, during which he will enter the 80s, despite social fractures in the United States and the inevitable rescue by world crises, he can perform almost almost anything. “I am in front of you now,” he said during his inauguration, “as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible … We stand at the edge of the four greatest years in American history . “
The other elements of Trump’s fantasy include the belief that the United States can essentially ignore the climate crisis; that he can impose large prices on imports without causing an increase in their prices; that Trump’s personal interventions can quickly and permanently end long -standing conflicts such as Gaza; And that his constant lies, his exaggerations and his inventions can create new realities, both reshaping the current history and permanently rewritten. In short, the Trump Fantasy promises that at an anti-political age, its policy brand can nevertheless resolve everything.
However, at the same time, the first days of his second term revealed truths on the United States which were previously half hidden. Its alliance with Western Europe is not permanent. It is always an imperial power in the traditional sense, with territorial ambitions. And a large part of American companies are happy to have an authoritarian government, as long as it is good for profits. The “greatest civilization of history”, as Trump described his country during the inauguration, is really a brutally competitive and aggressively nationalist place – at least for great stretching – rather than society and essentially benign superpower believed For so long by so many liberals. Trump’s unleashed presidency had to finally make it obvious.
Even more confusing for those who do not support it, sometimes the fantastic and based on the reality of Trumpism are closely tangled. His strong support from men and Judgment of pro didirate policiesFor example, are partly the products of a fantasy – that under him, male domination, as it existed decades ago, can be restored – and yet they also recall that in the United States, as in D ‘Other democracies, socially conservative men remain a powerful electoral force.
Likewise, Trump’s climatic policies – as delusional as they seem with growing expanses of his country on fire because of extreme weather conditions – are also a recognition that any serious American response to the crisis would force her voters and richer donors to make drastic lifestyle changes. If the planet and the patriarchy are in difficulty, as many supporters of Trump probably accept it, basically, like everyone else, then there is an argument, although selfish, to take advantage of all the privileges with high intensity of carbon carbon traditional American masculinity while you can. With his love for burgers and gold surfaces, his golf courses hungry for water and several houses, Trump’s own life is constantly presenting this type of consumption of heavy escape from resources. In an increasingly haunted world by rarity, with supply chains weakened by wars, disturbing weather conditions and pandemic, its excess is a raw but powerful declaration.
Faced again by this combination of reality-denial and personal interest, how those who could oppose Trump in the country and abroad, or who direct governments that will have to coexist with his, find their blood -POLD POLITICS? A way may simply be to wait for his frenzy of decrees to lose its political efficiency, a process that may have already started with a Order federal chaotically freezing subsidies this week. Even some Trump voters will soon or later realize that the publication of Washington decrees and the end of the “decline of America”, as he promises, is not the same thing.
Another useful approach can be to understand the attractiveness for many voters of Trump’s fantasies, but also their impracticity. Despite Trump’s claims and a gullible media that he is a unique American leader, the country has a recent tradition of republican presidents who make inaccessible promises. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan said that he would make America again secure, with one unprecedented “Star Wars” anti-missile systemAnd in the 2000s, George W Bush undertook to do the same by invading Iraq. The two projects were disasters. The war in Iraq also damaged the American allies, in particular Great Britain, in part because the government of Tony Blair considered the fixing in Bush Iraq as too powerful to question. Demanding, Keir Starmer and Trump already tell us how much they get along.
Any other non-republican tried to simply accept that Trump’s age could usefully turn to the figures behind his support. Last year, unlike 2016, he won the popular vote, But only 1.5 percentage points. However, the pro and anti-Trump forces act as if he had a mandate so overwhelming that the resistance is futile. The majority of his party in the Senate and the Chamber is also tiny. If he only disappointed a small fraction of his supporters, no majority can survive in the mid-term elections of 2026.
Trump may seem dumbfounded now. However, it will soon be only another outgoing, in an anti-nervous world. The problem then, for those who do not support him, will not be his domination of the discourse, which can slip, but the part of the American state which he controls.