A danger to humanity

Trump takes us back to biblical times when the dangers looming over humanity were a daily torment for believers. Sometimes it was a universal flood, other times pandemics and the fear of invasions by enemies of the faith. Today all those fears scarcely exist or have been dampened. But others have emerged, and with great strength and deep roots. We live under the histrionic and thoughtless whims of Donald Trump, a character democratically elevated to a material power that he understands and uses as if he were the lord and master of the planet that houses us.

He wields the tariffs that will burden imports from other countries as if they were an executive weapon with which he manipulates and punishes at will those countries whose governments he finds neither docile nor agreeable, as in the examples of Brazil and Canada, the neighbour whose territory surpasses his in size, but which has not acceded to his pretension of joining as the 51st state of the federation he leads. The case of Brazil is his response to the failure of his friend, the former president and dictator Bolsonaro, who attempted to regain office through a coup d’état, just as he himself did after his defeat in 2020.

Trump, the character who attempts to impose his often irrational ideas and decisions, has broken the international community in just six months, all without taking time to think through his decisions, seek proper advice, or facilitate the development of the most disadvantaged. His principles, neither edifying personally nor in an ethical trajectory, stem from the conviction that he has been chosen from heaven to guide others, toy with their dignity, and make use of them according to his impulses and interests. To this end he lies, finds faithful followers who listen to him and nothing stands in his way to achieve his objectives.

To think that such a character moves about the world with the arrogance that comes from carrying a briefcase with sufficient nuclear codes to declare the destruction of part of the earth, cannot fail to intimidate. The saving grace is that fewer and fewer people take his bluster as just Trump being Trump, twirling a finger at his temple. He entered the White House, the centre of absolute power, boasting of being a friend to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, perhaps the ruler least inclined to friendships, and promised he would sort out the war in Ukraine, but six months have passed and all he has managed is to make it worse.

The penultimate display of his uncontrolled impulsiveness came three days ago when he received some statements from former president Medvedev, Putin’s aide-de-camp, who boasted in his declarations about Russian military capacity, and Trump, incapable of discerning the gravity of matters, barely had time to order the deployment of two nuclear submarines to the Russian border. The Kremlin responded by ordering military manoeuvres in the area. For them, a children’s game of moving their toy horse about on a carpet.