2024-02-12 06:21:18
by Matteo Persivale
The arrows against NATO, which he would like to leave. The insults to Merkel: “You owe me a trillion dollars.” Enemies branded as “infected and parasites”. The most controversial phrases of the former president
Kennedy, 1963: «Ich bin ein Berliner: I am a Berliner». Reagan, 1987: «Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Trump, 2024: «I would give carte blanche to the Russians to let them do whatever the hell they want».
From Draghi’s “whatever it takes” to Trump’s “whatever the hell they want” to leave NATO at the mercy of the Kremlin: when historians of the future analyze the end of the American century and the uncertain beginning of a new era, they will not be able not to reflect primarily on the revolution of presidential language. The head of the US government is also commander in chief of the armed forces, especially the navy under the protection of which post-war globalization was built (many Westerners tend to forget this, the Houthis do not).
It was inevitable that the first stirrings of the post-American world occurred in the context of a certain confusion. But if the Democrats – first the professor Obama, now the fifty-year expert in Washingtonian plots Biden – seek more reasoned ways to ease American engagement in the world, Trump has no doubts.
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Anyone in NATO (and there are objectively many 20 countries out of 31) who does not invest at least 2% in military spending is a “delinquent”, a defaulter, he explained the other night at an election rally in South Carolina: and he replaces diplomacy with a crude interpretation of NATO as a racket, those who pay for protection are defended and the others are not.
Because Trump – so far the first and only president to have neither political nor military experience – brought to the White House the logic and language of his two historic professions, the New York real estate developer and the reality TV personality.
So the words – a lush river, from the podium and on his social Truth – of diplomacy are transformed amidst the roars of the crowd – physical and digital – into brass knuckles, with isolationism becoming the main strategy of foreign policy (to most be careful, it had not escaped notice that already in 2016 Trump had resurrected the slogan “America First”, discredited in the 1930s by Lindbergh and numerous pro-German Americans).
The words, and the tone of voice: «Not long ago – the Republican political scientist Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic – many Americans and especially the Republicans would have considered a man with Trump’s ideas a fanatic animated by hatred for America, crazy.”
But the Republican Party of the past has been taken over by Trump with his “Maga” (Make America Great Again) people who are horrified by NATO. A people who have now replaced the old red hats with white “Ultra Maga” ones in a headlong rush towards extremism, and have replaced yesterday’s enemies (Russia, China, Iran) with the media, the numerous magistrates who are investigating Trump, and as he wrote yesterday in capital letters on Truth”, “the Deep State, the communists, the Marxists, the fascists, the infected politicians and the fake news media, these tyrants and evildoers” who a few weeks ago alarmed those familiar with the history of the twentieth century have defined it as “parasites to be eradicated”. It is a war, of liberation. And the tones are apocalyptic: «Our Final Battle», our final battle, «with you at my side».
Aid to developing countries? “I will cancel them, from now on only subsidized loans.” The hatred for NATO – which for once replaces the Mexicans as the bogeymen of the Trumpian people – is illustrated in Paolo Valentino’s book The Age of Merkel (Marsilio) which dedicates a chapter to the insults aimed at the then chancellor: «You owe me one thousand billion dollars, Germany steals” when it welcomes her into the Oval Office, the heavy “bullshit”, bullshit, contrary to the statistics you cited, and at the G7 of La Malbaie after having proposed to readmit Russia (excluded after the annexation of Crimea) refuses to sign the final statement and then throws two fruit candies on the table saying: «Angela, don’t say that I never gave you anything».
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February 12, 2024 (modified February 12, 2024 | 07:58)
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