The wrong target
We talk a lot about Donald Trump, detailing his frenzied egotism and making the character the epicenter of the problems of Western democracies. But Trump is a dull character, devoid of the slightest interest. We come across millions of the same kind, leaning on a bar, or discharging their gall on a sofa in a corner of an evening, or even playing boss in a subordinate office, in front of an unarmed underling. Trump is a nasty staph responsible for a huge boil right in the middle of Uncle Sam’s nose. But who allowed the bacteria to proliferate like this? Isn’t it the context, the proliferation of Trumpism that is the real disease? What does Trump reveal about American society?
If Trumpism is a disease we must understand its pathophysiology. Why didn’t the social organization defend itself? Aggressive microbes have always threatened democracies. Why does the American suffer from apparent immune incompetence? Trump speaks to his voters as if they were complete morons, while the voters receive this speech as if they were heads of state praised for their beliefs. How is such an absurd discrepancy possible?
Easier to attack Trump than American society
I will not insist on the nonsense that Trump uses in each of his tweets or speeches, we are inundated with it. The communicator’s technique is not new: he says what his listeners want to hear and includes in this wonderful dish ingredients that are inedible, but which they absorb nonetheless. A political activist has always been threatened with poisoning by his appetite. What’s new among voters is a surprising wariness of being encouraged to think for themselves, replaced by a slavish enthusiasm for being treated like idiots. As if standing in a corner of the classroom with a dunce cap had now become a consecration!!
The reversal is profound. Sharing an intelligent vision of social affairs with an analyst more gifted than you is no longer a pleasure. It is an unacceptable vexation if our opinion is contrary. We can no longer stand it when someone else thinks better, when a hierarchy of opinions imposes itself on ours. A Trump had no chance of establishing himself in an authentic, organized and hierarchical democracy, while he has no difficulty in doing so in an anarchy, which is the true face of contemporary American society.
The origin of immune incompetence
Immunity is a system, that is to say a cellular collective. Immunosuppression does not imply that individual cells have become incompetent; it is their organization that is no longer coordinated. They are no longer united by the common interest, the preservation of the global organism. This is indeed the case of this contemporary society. Certainly individualism has continued to grow since the time of the pioneers, to the point of ultra-individualism which consists of leaving weapons in free circulation in the absence of war, to defend oneself against one’s own fellow citizens. However, even if Trump’s egotism resonates with most Americans, he is not the problem.
The upheaval is the collapse of collectivism. Yet it was as vigorous as individualism at the beginning of the nation, because it was not possible to get by without belonging to small communities, within a large one. But it’s over. The individual has so many rights at his disposal that he no longer needs to show solidarity, no longer needs to reconcile his opinion in the slightest with that of his neighbor. He can live in an entirely solipsistic universe, the only acceptable reality, and all relationships are filtered, conventionalized, dubbed or eradicated.
Leader of the Wokistanate
Trumpism is a social disease that gives rise to a banal guy because banality is placed on a pedestal. Donkey caps no longer exist. By absorbing stupidity, people instead award themselves a flamboyant crown. To be told what we like is to be treated as we deserve, to reclaim our importance. The adoration of oneself, of one’s personal opinions, is the official religion. God serves as a modest screen for the divinization that we have granted to our own vision of the world. The solidarity speech of the son, of Jesus, has died out. All that remains is the father’s authoritarian speech, which is not the interest of the Whole but of the One: oneself. Of the two, however, the son was clearly the closer to humanity.
Trump has made himself the leader of a band of self-proclaimed gods, who no longer agree to give up the slightest particle of personal power. Frightened gods. Wokists. Over-armed to face the wokists opposite. America has become Wokistan. This wokistanate sows terror and confusion across the world. That it relinquishes control to a man without vision like Trump and it will be its collapse.
The dunce cap is now in the center of the stage, teaching the American students. He teaches them nothing, contenting himself with exalting their primary convictions. No debate agitates the class. Everyone has their fists raised…
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