You may have seen it, perhaps, that message that has received countless likes on social media. “For the first time in history, you can simply post ‘HE IS AN IDIOT’ and 90 percent of the world will know who you’re talking about.” Hahaha. Very good. But the idiot also has reasons to laugh.
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Especially if you consider other percentages, those that show where he stands in polls compared to some of the main European government leaders, none of whom are remotely as idiotic as he is. Here are the numbers.
Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, has a 27% favorable opinion among voters in his country; Emmanuel Macron, the French President, 23%; Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor, 20%; Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, 30%; Donald Trump, the President of the United States, 40%.
Even acknowledging a possible margin of error of five percent, according to experts in these matters, it is clear that the ultimate idiot enjoys appreciably more popular support than the geniuses of European politics. While Starmer, Macron, Merz, and Sánchez stagger, all declining and a couple perhaps about to fall, Trump is assured to remain in the White House for two and a half more years, unless chance intervenes and he dies, or Congress intervenes and he ends up in a madhouse or, less likely, a brave judge sends him to jail.
Starmer is an intelligent guy; Macron, an intellectual; Merz, an adult; Sánchez, very clever. We could not attribute any of these virtues to Trump, rather the opposite. But he beats them all, among his own people, in popularity.
What conclusions to draw? I can only speculate, but to start I would suggest that we live in an era where people are fed up with politics as usual. The European leaders I mention are lifelong professional politicians who inspire more cynicism than faith. Non-professional figures generate growing attraction. The conventional repels; the aberration sells. An extreme case would be Javier Milei in Argentina. Another would be Trump himself, who came to power twice presenting himself as the anti-politician.
While Starmer, Macron, Merz, and Sánchez stagger, Trump beats them all in popularity
This can also be interpreted as the rise of far-right parties like Vox in Spain, Reform (from brexiteer Nigel Farage) in the United Kingdom, AFD in Germany, and National Rally in France. What they all have in common is not so much coherent policies but the promise of “change.” It is not at all clear what the change would consist of, and almost certainly not even they know.
They do not offer concrete solutions to real problems, widespread worldwide, such as housing prices. Their secret lies not in being for something but against everything. Just by declaring that they will break with the past – expressing it in a radical and crude way, distancing themselves from the usual politicians – they will win the votes of the masses, increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo.
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Something like this explains, or helps explain, the Trump phenomenon. It responds to a kind of collective psychosis, a general discontent aggravated and multiplied by another phenomenon of our times, the planetary loudspeaker that the internet has given us. Whoever best knows how to take advantage of the persuasive utility of social networks (see how Gabriel Rufián’s political career advances) prospers more.
Another conclusion can be drawn from this surprising difference in the levels of support that European leaders and Trump have: that the European electorate is more demanding than the American one. More demanding in terms of human quality, brain capacity, and moral courage of their leaders. 40% of the US population is happy to have a senile clown in the White House, a guy who starts an unnecessary war that harms the economy of all beings on Earth, except that of his buddies and family, who get rich while the rest, including Trump voters, sink.
The influence peddling attributed to Zapatero is the modus operandi of the US Administration
The most notable – and here there is no room for doubt – is the tolerance of Americans towards corruption. Compare the news of the week in Spain with the news we have every day in the US since Trump took office last January.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former Spanish Prime Minister, has been accused of influence peddling. It is alleged, supposedly like his ally Pedro Sánchez, that he abused power to benefit people close to him. The Zapatero case, they say, could be the last straw that ends the Sánchez government.
In the doubtful case that he found out what is happening in Spain, Trump would die laughing once again. “Influence peddling” is not the exception but the modus operandi of his Administration. With Zapatero, they talk about a half-million-euro fraud. Trump and his people accumulate similar amounts every day before getting out of bed. There is no space here, nor in a book, to detail exactly how they acquired their billions thanks to the multiplicity of their “connections” inside and outside the US, and the blatant exploitation of power levers in Washington. It was summed up by the title of an editorial in The New York Times this week: “There has never been a presidential corruption case like this.”
But no impeachment or judicial charges, not even close.
There are two ways to see the scandal unleashed by Zapatero in Spain. Either it is admirable or ridiculous. Admirable because it shows that Spain is still a democracy where no one is above the law. Ridiculous because in much of the rest of the world, starting with the once exemplary US republic, democracy is rotting. Insisting on the moral integrity of rulers in the face of this trend has become folkloric, anachronistic, almost romantic. The dominant ethic: not stealing is for fools.
As is also insisting on these issues, sometimes I think: wouldn’t it be more accurate to abandon morality and surrender to absurdity? Shakespeare gives me a clue when, desperate, he writes: “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
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