Comment by Evgeny Dainov:
For about a quarter of a century, a significant part of humanity, stressed and frankly frightened by the growing diversity of life, began to perceive life in a way described by the philosopher Heidegger as "horror of being". It is strange and unexpected that today the most open people in the world - Americans - have fallen into this state.
From witch hunts to today's right-wing and left-wing hysteria
In history, every time people fall into such horror, two things happen: they run to hide from it in some tribal environment of their own kind and/or they begin to persecute some external group that they blame for their horror. At the beginning of the transition from the traditional to the modern world, for example, there is that mass hysteria that leads to the burning of witches and scientists at the stake. Scientists burn because they bring turmoil to souls with their revelations about the infinite complexity of existence. Women are on fire because men accuse them of using their mysterious powers to get their men into trouble.
Subsequently, the rapid industrialization of Europe tears people out of their familiar rural world and they rush to hide in quasi-tribes offered to them by the new totalitarian ideologies such as Nazism, Fascism and Communism. Once immersed in them, people breathe a sigh of relief. They no longer feel naked and afraid in front of a world they do not understand. On the contrary, they have found an environment of security in which there is someone - whether a leader or a Fuhrer - to protect them from the ever-increasing existence. There is also an enemy who, if eliminated, will make existence friendlier for "ordinary people". This enemy for the fascists is the liberals, for the communists - the bourgeoisie, for the Nazis - the Jews and the "degenerates" who spoil their landscape.
There are relatively few new things in political life. In comparable situations, comparable reactions of the human masses are repeated. Therefore, without any surprise, I observed how, with the unfolding of globalization at the beginning of this century, people again experienced the familiar horror of the growing diversity of the world - and again began to look for some hollows, some tribes in which to find refuge.
From the right, fascist-like right-wing populists appeared, promising that if "Hungary" remained only "for the Hungarians" or if the Roma and Turks were expelled from Bulgaria, things would become simple, clear and good for the "people". The same thing happened on the left half of politics, which is not surprising - great public fears always develop on both the left and the right, simply donning different ideological clothes.
The unexpected thing this time was that the left's descent into tribalism ("tribalism") took place in the United States, which until then had seemed immune to such hysteria. In the extreme American left, a specific tribal ideology developed, called "identity politics", which stated that a person is not a separate and autonomous individual, capable of making his own decisions, but a kind of ant in the anthill into which he was born – female/male, white/black, etc.
Trump is turning the US into a closed ghetto
On both the left and the right, the individual - the supporting beam of all modern law, morality, politics, economics and culture - was abolished and replaced with anthills, hives and tribes. They, of course, unlike the autonomous individual, were not part of the world. They did not walk around it as if they were at home. They created their own ghettos - small parts of the world that have renounced it and are trying to close themselves off in some impossible, but nevertheless hostile to everyone, self-sufficiency.
With the unfolding of Donald Trump's second presidential term, even America, the most cosmopolitan place in the world, which gave it modern culture, science, economics and law - even this America is trying to reformat itself as a closed ghetto, barbed against everyone beyond its borders.
The withdrawal of the United States from the world has no analogue in modern history. The only similarity is with the closure of North Korea in the early 1950s.
The current American administration, recently called "traitorous" by Bruce Springsteen, is following the usual line for any provincial dictator - to quarrel with the entire world in order to blame it for some of its invented troubles. And at the same time, to quarrel with more and more groups inside the country, branding them as "enemies of the people", working to weaken the country in favor of the bad outside world.
The White House has been treacherously and unexpectedly imposing tariffs on all countries in the world, including islands inhabited by penguins. We see particular fury in relations with the closest allies for generations - such as Mexico and Canada. It has territorial claims to this same Canada, as well as to Panama and Denmark.
The result is that the world has decided to live without America. Dozens of state leaders have already postponed visits to the White House for fear of being humiliated, insulted and shouted at. Tens of thousands of business trips to the US have been canceled - why the hell would they go there, since all the conditions for doing business depend on what Donald Trump will think of when he wakes up? Millions of tourist trips to the US have been canceled - tourists are afraid that they may be arrested, humiliated and put in some kind of pre-trial detention center from the moment they land at the airport.
There is no goal, everything is a demonstration
The world is reorganizing itself as if the US did not exist. Gradually, the leadership of this de-Americanized world is being taken over by Canada, more openly and declaratively, and by Great Britain, which acts more quietly and covertly. In a matter of weeks, the White House has squandered influence, admiration, and goodwill accumulated over more than a century.
At home, the White House has also declared war on everyone. Federal institutions are acting like bludgeons against the media, universities, law firms, judges, and inconvenient members of parliament. Masked civilians are kidnapping people from the streets - something I have only seen in Lukashenko's Belarus. The economic chaos unleashed daily from the Oval Office is hitting small and medium-sized businesses, industrial enterprises, farmers, and merchants. Fear, mass slander, and Asian servility are being instilled.
What is the goal? All those who have suffered ask themselves this question, and more and more often they come to the correct conclusion: there is no goal. All public behavior, especially political behavior, is instrumental or expressive. Instrumental is behavior that is subordinate to achieving a clear goal. Expressive behavior is behavior that aims to demonstrate what the subject of the behavior thinks and feels. In general, expressive behavior is behavior typical of teenage subcultures: I look like this and do that so that it is understood that I am a heavy metal, hippie, punk, goth, hipster, football hooligan, etc. With age comes a change - mature individuals reorient themselves from expressive to instrumental behavior. With expressive behavior you cannot raise children or pay a mortgage.
That is generally the case. But there are individuals who never mature and, having found themselves in power, continue to demonstrate expressive behavior - to show others not what they want to achieve, but who they are.
And hence: all talk about some "goal" of the "policies" of the current American administration is meaningless. There is neither a goal nor policies. There are eruptions that reveal the emotional world and mental potential of their bearers.
Will Americans return to the bosom of civilization?
Look at the behavior of any minister or associate of Donald Trump during the regular questionings to which they are obliged to give explanations before various committees in Congress. You will see people who are completely ignorant and proud of this ignorance of theirs as a kind of "authenticity", which they oppose to the "scholarship" of the "elite". Trump's most trusted people know nothing about anything and think that this elevates them above those who know something about something. This conviction also explains their striking disorganization, that contemptuous arrogance towards others that no one has ever demonstrated in the state, in whose founding document we read: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal".
The Trumpists have neither politics nor goals. They are not subject to reason, but to passions. Passions generate not policies, but ideas and images.
But what do they imagine as the desired end result? These are simply constructed minds and they imagine simple things. They obviously see the desired future as a scene from a movie about life after the fall of civilization - say, "Messiah of the Future" by Kevin Costner. They see something like a strongly fortified medieval village inhabited by people from the same tribe, unconditionally subordinate to their leader. When an approaching horseman emerges from the mist, the village guards throw whatever they have at him and instruct him not to stop at them but to continue on his way.
In the film, Kevin Costner was lucky that the chief of the fortified village he approached was Tom Petty. They got along like gentlemen, and Petty's tribe helped Costner continue his path to the revival of civilization.
Therefore, in present-day America, they are wanted: 1. Kevin Costner; 2. Tom Petty. If they are found, the Americans will return to the bosom of civilization. If not - let's see.