We're
back, but better? (as
the Kirchner’s slogan in Argentina’s 2019 election said)
Among the many similarities between Trump and Argentine
Peronism-Kirchnerism (and Bolivarian nationalisms) are the use of populist myths such as
isolationism and cultural vendettas (in addition to the cult of personality of
the leader who fights against one or several external enemies and his internal
"traitors").
If,
in Trump’s first turn, his critics underestimated the method in its apparent
madness (as Shakespeare's Polonius suspecting -late- of Hamlet's feigned
insanity) and failed to see the skillful social media strategy and detection of
social resentments behind the cascade of popular lies - Obama the black African
and closet Muslim, Latino immigrants and blacks as beneficiaries of asylums,
"sanctuary cities" and raising the cost of Medicare with Obamacare -
and nationalist slogans - such as MAGA, isolationism, and deportations, in his
second season in the White House they would be ignoring the other side of
Trumpism: the madness behind his methods.
The
tariff war, the delirious threats of annexation of Canada, Greenland, the
Panama Canal, and the conversion of Gaza into a Mediterranean Riviera operated
by Trump himself as a savior real estate business speak loudly of the
Napoleonic drunkenness behind the methods of the ineffable Donald and his
reality show management in front of cameras (it is inevitable to remember the
"Hello President" of the late Hugo Chavez). If the first Trump was
successful with his taxes, then the first Trump was successful with his taxes.
cuts and deregulation in lowering the price of gasoline - the sensitive guts of
the Trumpist bastions that move around in trucks and pickups - and with his
symbolic threat of raising a wall with Mexico, the second shows that the loss
of control of the successful gambler dominates the negotiating calculation.
Now, the cascade of threats and pompous executive orders show another edge of Shakespearian drama, such as "the sound and the fury of the madman signifying nothing" (apart from the pleasure of kamikaze revenge).
Trump 2.0 switches Shakespeare's plays. The new administration is sliding dangerously from Hamlet's revenge to Macbeth's folly and defeat, advised by schemers and
sycophants. The new cast has old faces: - charlatans like Steven Bannon, the
leader of populist nationalism (which Trump discarded in his first term),
monomaniacs like Stephen Miller, the leader of the xenophobic wing and that
version of Henry Ford of the 21st century that Elon Musk has become.
Trump keeps swinging his wrecking ball for the cameras, breaking down pillars of local and global order. He seems oblivious to the wobbly roof over his head (the inevitable response of lawsuits and reprisals paralysis it will generate) or to his floor—the inflation and financial runs that the tariff war promises on the domestic front.
Fretting
after the latest developments, Wall Street is already raising red flags,
and if inflation takes off, Trump's most loyal voters will have front-row seats to feel the impact.
Milei
- who is as bold as Trump but better prepared in economics - coined a caveat to
those who call him crazy, saying that the only difference between a madman and
a genius is the results.
Trump
considers himself a genius - like Milei - but his inflated ego resembles Hindenburg's dangerous equivalent.
Let's
hope it reacts before crashing into the many moorings it will need.
Perhaps the best pantomime of a tariff war was immortalized by Laurel & Hardy in 1929, on the eve of another outbreak of madness in apparently rational methods.
