It is very likely that the next time I deliver this column, the presidency of the richest, most powerful and dangerous country in the world—the country in which I have lived for years—is about to be occupied by a mentally unstable man who is sending more signs of suffer from dementia. Donald Trump is not only a criminal convicted by justice, he is a confessed coup plotter who still has four open processes, two of them for electoral fraud. And months ago he stopped making coherent speeches at his events; In recent weeks he has said that if they vote for him no one will have to vote in the future and added that in reality it is no longer even necessary to vote for him to win. He cancels appearances and interviews left and right, and in the middle of this month, already floating in the atmosphere of a planet whose air no one else has breathed, he announced in the middle of a question-and-answer event with voters that it was best to stop talking and get to listen to music. He spent the remaining forty minutes requesting specific pieces from the program’s soundtrack, sometimes conducting an imaginary orchestra, sometimes swaying to the rhythm of the songs. All of this is serious, very serious, but it is known that power makes one sick and it is not illegal to be crazy and aspire to the presidency of a Republic. The tremendous thing is that he is competing against an acting vice president, with an agenda between moderate and conservative, whose central offer is to reduce the tax burden of the middle class and not be crazy. Harris has almost presidential visibility, she has been attorney for the largest and most populous state in the United States and a senator, she won the debate in a landslide, she has raised more money than anyone ever to promote her candidacy — more than a billion dollars according to the National Public Radio—. And not only are the polls not moving from the desperate 50/50 in which they have been stuck since Harris was elected candidate, if the needle moves, it is towards Trump. There are populists from the right, left and far-right winning elections all over the country. world, but Trump’s case blows all standards. Meloni, Modi, Sheinbaum, Orban, even Milei, are not convicted criminals; They said things that seem simple, improbable, and dangerous to an important part of the societies that shelter them, but they said them with grammar and conviction. They won comfortably. Things that count as ideas, like a program that could serve to articulate a government. It’s been months since Donald Trump stopped presenting a plan, he only insults, he murmurs, he tells – when it happens – lies that his voters are the first to know are blatant – and the numbers say he is going to win. Nobody understands how or why. It is, of course, the distortion of the Electoral College, which replaces direct democracy in the United States. It is the resentment that has generated the growth of inequality between whites from the center and those from the coasts. The pure and simple racism of an important part of society. But there is something else, a mass madness, a society that suddenly ties itself to the kamikaze band, as if half the country had stopped smoking yesterday and preferred to kick the manger. And there is no explanation, and there are no reasons, and there is nothing but hopelessness because if what exists is fatal, what is coming is going to be worse.
#Álvaro #Enrigue #abyss