Countdown
Yesterday we left off with Trump's latest attempt to sort European leaders into two camps. There are some good ones, he claimed, and there are some idiots. He did not bother to name names, of course. He simply left the rest of the world to fill in the blanks.
It is not hard to imagine whom he means. Our thoughts naturally go to the "willing group". According to Trump, they are the ones who want the war with Russia to continue. The British, the French and the German. These three, for some analysts, are Zelensky's allies and together they supposedly want the war to go on in order to hide their own corruption. It is a view you cannot avoid hearing. As a continuation of yesterday's text, I am giving a short excerpt I found on social media, which seems to extend the Trump phenomenon in depth. Among many things, Greek author Loukas Velidakis writes:
"Trump functions more like a merchant of simplifications than a president. A man who views the world as a platform for real estate deals and war as a bad investment. With low understanding of data, zero historical depth and no awareness of rules. A hostility driven super narcissist who behaves as if the United States belong to him, as if the country were a golf club, and who threatens everyone and everything except of course the authoritarians."
Spend a little time and listen to him. The tone of voice, the way he speaks, the flow of his thinking, assuming he has one. He could easily be an old man in a village café telling stories of past glories with plenty of extra seasoning to make them sound spicier.
Trump, as brought about by a grim convergence of events and the deep foolishness of a segment of voters, transfers this entire performance into reality, playing the role of planetary ruler, which in his mind is literal. He thinks he is something like a medieval king.
His statements to Politico are indicative and repulsive. He said that Russia has the upper hand because it is a bigger country, so might makes right. He said that Ukraine is losing, therefore it must accept any deal he gives it, essentially Moscow's wish list, a miserable capitulation for a country that has not been defeated. And he complains that Europe supposedly puts the brakes on the gifts he offers Putin.
We said yesterday that the world is changing at lightning speed, hour by hour. Trumpism was born of this mutation, or Trump himself continuously generates new distortions and crises through his presence. A fateful manager of global turmoil.
For me, one fact stands: how did today's Europe get caught asleep? From Trump's first term it should have regrouped. We are living in a historical thermomix where no one, absolutely no one, can predict whether the food will simply warm up or whether we will burn along with it.