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The world listens as Donald Trump, President of the United States, on a state visit to the United Kingdom bemoans the fact that Prime Minister, Theresa May, had “wrecked Brexit” because she had not taken his advice. We then see Trump, standing at a podium at Chequers alongside May, declaring that “Boris Johnson would make a great Prime Minister.” May deftly brushed off Trump's criticisms, saying, “Don't worry, it's only the press.”
Many of us are now used to Trump's outrageous public statements which he just as readily denies as being “fake news”, but the more we laugh, the more we succumb to a helpless despondency that this is our new reality – a reality ruled by the id and freed from the paternal shackles of the super-ego. This is the justice of the disaffiliated and disempowered Trump electorate who are finally having their say against the elites who are deemed responsible for unfair regulation, job losses, and inequality.
As Trump presses ahead with economic tariffs and the disruption of political stability across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and as populist movements proliferate across the globe, are the dissenting voices losing traction? Are “we” (liberal elites) only talking to ourselves? Trump's words and his actions, once shocking to many of us, are now laughed at and at least partly dismissed as the words of a monster. This is eerily reminiscent of the gradual numbing helplessness experienced by many Germans during the onset of the Third Reich.
In his famous memoir of Nazi Germany,
Defying Hitler, Sebastian Haffner wrote,