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This essay by Stefano Graziosi and Daniele Scalea is literally precious: it deserves to be studied carefully and to have it on hand until the elections on November 3. In fact, in a landscape of “information” all squeezed on one side, which does not hesitate to describe Donald trump like a monster to be killed, like a ghost to be exorcised, like a parenthesis to close, this book has an essential function: it rationally reconstructs the events of 2016 until today; shows the deep social reasons that led to Trump’s unexpected success; describes the obsessive campaign – media, judicial and deep state – unleashed for four years against the current occupant of the White House; demystifies lies and false narratives, without hiding Trump’s mistakes and character quirks; and above all, it highlights the two strategic challenges that are on the horizon, whoever is the winner of the next US electoral confrontation.
First challenge: at the global level, the Chinese communist dictatorship, with its expansionism, its militarism, its attitude towards the repression of freedom not only within the immense national borders, its unfair commercial practices, its “acquisition” and ability to exercise geopolitical influence.
Second challenge: in our western camp, canceling culture as a more and more aggressive stage of political correctness, as a desire to accredit a unique reading of history, as a propensity to crush dissent, as a constant fault of the West and our civilization , as an Orwellian inclination to impose uniformity in the name of diversity (in today’s current language, we first explain that diversity is a wealth, and then, however, all dissenting and non-standardized opinion is savagely beaten).
It is useless to turn it around: in the absence of the health and economic earthquake caused by the Coronavirus, Donald Trump would have launched a great and spectacular reconfirmation. Suffice it to say that, thanks to its tax cuts and record economic performance, even last February, before Covid 19, the unemployment in the US it was close to zero, at 3.5%, its lowest level in more than fifty years. After that, the Coronavirus changed everything. According to Trump’s opponents, because of his especially initial underestimation of the problem. According to less biased observers, an unprecedented target tsunami determines tosi in half the world, and thus in America as well.
Sure, Trump starts the final sprint of the election campaign late, according to all the polls. At the same time, however, we must not forget that it is the same polls that four years ago left him for dead. Moral: it is prudent to recognize that today the outgoing president is obliged to persecute, but it is equally prudent not to hand him over in defeat. Also because, and this seems to me to be the heart of Graziosi and Scalea’s reasoning and story, whatever the result of the November vote, a very high number of American voters (about half) and some problems will not go away in absolute, but will remain. and how. THE blue rusty belt necklaces (and not just those), a middle and lower-middle class whose standard of living had collapsed for years (and who had seen the first signs of a positive countertrend in the four-year period), a large chunk of American society It has nothing to do with the standard of living, the conversations, the atmosphere of New York or California: here, these voters, these Americans, are and will continue to be. Trump has given them a voice, and one can imagine that, one way or another, he will continue to do so.
Someone has the illusion, beating Trump, that they can reduce his presidency to an “accident” to overcome, to return to the usual little old world: an operation that can certainly be successful from a media point of view, but not from the point of view from a social point of view, where some wounds will remain open, deep and unhealed. And it certainly will not be the return of the “doctors” and “nurses” of the past, those who for many years had not been able to get the diagnosis or therapy right, to make things better. Indeed, that old establishment had not even been able to listen to the “patients”, understand their ills, discomfort, feelings: and instead had apostrophized them (he thought about it Hillary clinton with a joke meant to get tattooed on her) as “deplorable.”
In many ways, we are faced with the most glaring mistake politicians and commentators can make: being so focused on the opponent as to forget the voters, the anxieties, and the political questions the “enemy” has been able to answer. Furthermore, negative prejudice and rigid application of pre-established schemes were the tools that were also used to interpret Trump’s international policy, long presented as isolationist, described in gloomy and negative terms, obviously in contrast to the lyrical tones used. in the past to exalt Barack Obama, little explainable awarded in 2009 nothing less than a Nobel Peace Prize. However, in hindsight, the constant withdrawal of the Americans from Obanm (not just a military withdrawal from some theaters, but a moral and political setback regarding several crucial expedients) has led to the creation of a vacuum, a systematically exploited vacuum. . of the defenders of the West: of China, of Iran, as well as of Islamist terror. On the contrary, Trump, although a fierce opponent of endless wars, as Graziosi and Scalea explain, reaffirmed an assertive stance of the United States in all the most delicate games, making the United States take back the center of the ring: think of the confrontation with Beijing and On another level, the progressive isolation of Tehran, achieved thanks to the beginning of an unprecedented dialogue, favored by Washington, between Jerusalem and the most open and reforming part of the Arab world.
In any case, in this scenario, it is the European “tertiary”, which is a certain ambiguity of the EU with German traction, that should be worrying, with the dangerous illusion of placing Europe in a position of equidistance between NATO and the eastern powers. and Asians. But the European elites, even in this, have the ready excuse: it is always the fault of Trump, his tone and his manners, as if the character of an American president could justify our unclear geostrategic attitude. So let us be guided, as well as by the essay of Graziosi and Scalea, by a method, that illustrated by the former governor of the Bank of England, the great King Mervyn. When summoned by a parliamentary commission and asked to make a prediction, the banker invariably replied, “I am not a seer and I do not have a crystal ball.” King added that he could only outline scenarios and prepare so many coping strategies, that is, think about how to deal with these different hypotheses.
The first scenario, more desirable for the writer, but less likely today, is that of a reconfirmation of Donald Trump. It is clear that in this case the president would be very strong, at home and abroad. The deep state itself should accept its new four-year term and, as regards reflections on the realities closest to us, the European chancelleries cannot continue with their haughty hostility. If anything, it would be he, The Donald, who could play the attack, on the one hand, forging an even stronger relationship with the United Kingdom after Brexit, and on the other hand, within the borders of the EU, encouraging the governments (or opposition leaders) more capable of provoking a rebalancing of power with respect to the Franco-German axis, promoting to some extent a counterweight to the Berlin-Paris-Brussels triangle. And right here Italy should try to seize the opportunity, without shots to the head, but in a rational and serene way, to act on two fronts: on the one hand, maintaining its place in the Union, but on the other, participating in the construction of a a kind of Anglo-Middle-Eastern-European “ring” of the East, which (going from Washington to London, from Jerusalem to the capitals of the Mediterranean countries, and reaching many governments in Eastern Europe) presaged more complex alliances, more arctic , with fewer discounts. Which would also be useful to promote a renegotiation of European rules: for example, as I argued unheard of at the time, claim for the 27 countries that remain in the EU at least the concessions and autonomies that David Cameron had obtained for the United Kingdom, in early 2016, before the Brexit referendum.
The second scenario is that of a victory of Joe biden and her running mate Kamala Harris. There is no point in hiding it: the media hype would be deafening, and the attempt by establishment politicians and the mainstream media would be to proclaim the end of a season, the decline of sovereigns and populists, the return to “normality.” But it would be a wrong calculation because, as mentioned, even once Trump is defeated, his constituents will not disappear. However, in passing to the side of the pro-Trump European public opinion, it would be a mistake to react in a nervous and ill-thought-out way, practicing the hostility towards the possible Biden administration that others have foolishly reserved for Trump for years. The United States is and will continue to be a friend of whoever guides them pro tempo re. Of course, the Eurolyrics would celebrate, under the illusion of having given encouragement to an EU project that will remain fragile in many ways. The rest (the conservatives, the true liberals, the Atlanticists, those not homologated to the progressive current) will do well to keep their nerves and not lose the compass. And organize a solid cultural battle, not minority, not extremist and always inclusive. In the meantime, happy reading and big congratulations to the authors of this book.
