By LEONARDO BOFF*
Like Hitler and Mussolini, Trump was democratically elected – but his agenda is the destruction of democracy. His pathological narcissism and ‘America First’ are a recipe for unprecedented global tragedy.
1.
I have no powers of divination or fortune-telling. But I have always wondered what project lies behind the visible policies of a head of state. So in February 2020 I wrote a text about Donald Trump (governor from 2017-2021) and the dramatic times we could expect.
Now, with your reelection, I realize what I wrote. If it was dramatic, it has now become tragic for all humanity.
We are all under several threats: nuclear power, the shortage of drinking water in vast regions of the world, increasing global warming, the dramatic consequences of the overload of natural goods and services, indispensable to life (the Earth School Day).
Added to these threats is another, no less dangerous one, already raised by several global analysts such as Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz and reinforced now in 2025 by Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Sachs. No one knows what will happen to the trade war between the US and China. According to Noam Chomsky, a trade war “usually culminates in a real war that would now be lethal and final.”
Recently an Italian-Argentine economist, Roberto Savio, co-founder and CEO of Inter Press Service (IPS), now emeritus, wrote a thought-provoking article entitled: “Donald Trump is here to stay and change the world” (ALAI-Latin America in Motion June 20, 2018). It effectively turned the world upside down.
Roberto Savio states that Donald Trump is not a cause of the new global disorder. He is a symptom. The symptom of times in which the civilizing values that gave cohesion to a people and to international relations are simply annulled. What counts is the narcissistic voluntarism of a powerful head of state, Donald Trump, who replaced these values with money and business, pure and simple. These are the ones that definitely count. The rest are dispensable frills for world domination.
The "America first" should be interpreted as "only America" counts and its global interests. In the name of this purpose, already pre-announced in his campaign, Donald Trump broke trade agreements with old European allies, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and opened a risky trade war with his biggest rival, China, imposing import surcharges on products totaling billions of dollars, in addition to charging taxes on steel and other products to other countries such as Brazil.
2.
It is typical of authoritarian and narcissistic figures to make light of legislation. When it suits them, they override it without giving any further reasons. For Donald Trump, the invention of “a truth” is worth more than the factual truth itself. The “fake news" are a feature present on his Twitters. According to Fact Checker, since he took office in 2017 he has told around 3.000 lies. Truth and lies are valid to the extent that they support his interests. Interestingly, in 2024 he won the main elections and has the approval of part of the public opinion of the Republican Party.
He does not tolerate criticism and has surrounded himself with succubus advisors who say “yes” to everything at the risk of being summarily fired. He has surrounded himself with the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, and with the most arrogant and empty of thought and feeling.
Re-elected, he made the style of government and the denial of all ethics irreversible. Let us not forget that Hitler and Mussolini were also elected and created their sold lies. , Goebels as “truths” for an entire people. Faced with a world marked by xenophobia, the exclusion of millions of Jews, thousands and thousands of immigrants and refugees, and the exacerbated affirmation of national values in contempt of others, it borders on barbarism.
Such attitudes, transformed into official policies, can be a source of serious conflicts, which, if “escalated”, could even threaten the human species. Around 1300 American psychoanalysts and psychiatrists have reported serious psychological deviations in Donald Trump’s personality.
What will be the fate of humanity, given over to a narcissist of this ilk, whose parallel is only found in Nero who enjoyed watching the burning of Rome, with the difference that this time it is not just any fire, but the entire Common Home? Since it is unpredictable and can change its position at any time, we watch, frightened and astonished, what the future steps will be.
That God who announced himself as “the passionate lover of life” (Wisdom 11, 24) free us from tragedies that may occur, given the irrationality of someone who announces “one world, one empire and America first” (the North American empire).
*Leonardo Boff is an ecologist, philosopher and writer. Author, among other books, of Caring for our common home: clues to delay the end of the world (Vozes). [https://amzn.to/3zR83dw]
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