Reality or political realism or better yet real politik? Certainly, real politik was once nocturnal, submerged, elusive by the light of public discourse. Today it makes use of new communication technologies to reach as many audiences as possible in the shortest time at the same time.
The Trump-Zelensky clash was viewed by 150 million people on the social platform X alone. Times change and needs change, Orwellian angst is like the title,1984, now 20th-century stuff, as is the satire of the Truman show and the TV format, planetary, of John de Mol.
The furious three-way quarrel–there was also, yes, Vance the Deputy–was not an episode of the universal Big Brother, a super visual relational gossip about voluntary recluses. This was a state visit on issues of utmost urgency and delicacy, the war or peace in Ukraine. Nothing was unintentional or casual or irrational or emotional. Trump wanted to communicate to the world, today’s world of the Internet (and therefore in addition to TV), the political end of Zelensky, his non-necessity at the negotiating table with Putin, the concluded cycle of the people’s actor-hero, his replaceability in the future of his own country.
What’s more, America was clearly saying what it had long ago decided and had already matured with Biden: there was no longer the economic and war margins for further substantial aid. The battle for freedom and democracy of the West’s largest shareholder, the U.S., ended there. Zelensky must accept the response of the field and surrender to the Russians what they have taken by force despite all the weapons and technology provided in three years by the Euro-Atlantic alliance.
Brutal? Yes, of course. Realistic? Yes, of course. I read now from a social poll that 73% of Italians did not like Trump, but geopolitics does not work like Sanremo juries, which by the way, judging by the booing in the final, work badly. Peace, like war, has a cost, but it will have to be achieved in reality (real politik) and not just in rhetorical slogans in the squares.
There is, however, a final mystery-reversal paradox: perhaps the Ukrainian leader played the victim on purpose. In one fell swoop, in one planetary image, he rebuilt his domestic popularity and got hugs and money from the Europeans. Ah, dear old Europe, always absent, never quite over. It will still count in this story…
The article Real Trump comes from TheNewyorker.
