A figure depicting U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is seen at a store in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, US, on November 6, 2024. [Jeenah Moon/Reuters]
This is an earth changing event. The country which for over a century played a decisive role in how the world developed elected Donald Trump president for the second time, a presidency that will not be subject to the checks that existed when Trump was president from 2016-2020 and which applied to all his predecessors since the founding of the United States. And this has happened even though voters know full well who Trump is and what he represents.
Whatever the political issues of these elections may have been – the economy, immigration, the excesses of the woke guardians of political correctness, abortions, democracy, the alienation of young white men – Trump’s easy win constitutes something much more important. It is the collapse of basic, founding principles of the United States. It is the vanquishing of a civilization that we know as the natural development of the Enlightenment, which reached its apogee in the past century in many parts of the Earth.
We should not be fooled by the “normality” evident in the rituals of election. It is clear that if Trump had lost, the United States today would be in a vortex of doubt about the result, as “task forces” allied with him were ready to take action with judicial procedures and protests.
Whatever we thought sacred, whatever vision we had for a better world has been betrayed. The foundation of liberal democracy has cracked – the rule of law, protection of the weak and minorities, the social contract that all have equal rights and equal responsibilities. What will we tell children? That hard work, honesty, kindness, love, generosity mean nothing? That to get ahead you have to ignore anything that is in your way, to impose your will on all around you, to exploit the latent bigotry of people and not their decency, to make false promises, to set one group against the other, with the sole aim of your coming out on top? Trump’s triumph is the reward for all he says and does. This is what the long reigns of Putin, Erdogan and Netanyahu, among others, show.
What Trump represents leads to a primitive society, where the strong impose their will on the rest, where the interests of the rich and of certain groups determine the state’s actions. People like Trump avoid all accountability, and, in order to create a sense of justice, they unleash the full force of the law on those who are weaker. The same will apply in international relations. Stronger countries will do as they wish, without a strong power center that would seek some balance and semblance of justice. If the international system of governance appears to have problems today, it is most likely that soon we will see it out of control.
When Constantinople fell in 1453, those who fled towards the west with their learning and skills helped fuel the Renaissance. Today, we, too, need to keep alive the values of the civilization of the past decades. If America does not recover soon, Europe will have to shoulder the responsibility to attempt this rescue. It will not be easy, as Trump’s victory will intensify divisions in our continent, which is unprepared for such great responsibilities. And there will no longer be an America that will intervene and impose peace, in the way it did in the past century.
Those who are raising children, who are educating younger generations, who have a public voice, who create art – all of us – need to understand that hard times are coming. Our world has changed. We have a responsibility to save our principles and our hope.