Shame

It’s a shame the world we live in. Yet, we don’t have another option but only this one.

In the world we live in, war is going to guarantee more media coverage, the great television, special reporters, talking heads, and opposing propaganda, until people get tired of it — if they’re not in the places where people are being killed.

Trump doesn’t want to work hard to understand the complexities of the world. He doesn’t have the patience to listen. A boy who wants to get rid of any complexity; he wants everything to be self-evidently black and white: war is bad, peace is good. And he pushes away any notion that might change his perspective. That is his weakness. The way Trump pushes the world complexity away varies, though, depending on an adversary’s skill and effort to praise him as the greatest of the great. Trump is a politician from the 19th century with social media accounts. That is what he shares with Putin: a hollow greatness.

History matters. It’s what makes the difference between us Europeans and Americans. The former remember the mistakes of the past, trying to prevent them in the future. The latter still have mistakes to make. For Trump, it is not so important whether the Russo-Ukrainian war started in 2015 or 2014. The important thing is that it was Obama’s term. The only important thing for him is his flawless appearance. Trump will evolve; war does that to people. He just doesn’t understand yet that war can happen to you without choosing or wanting it.

Shame 1968, the only Ingmar Berman’s war film

What I saw in the Oval Office on February 28th was the erosion, the deterioration of what was once an unshakable imperial (in a good sense) institution — one that, for the past century, had been a source of aspiration and admiration among free nations. But the sources of its decay are many. Vanity is one of them.

After Trump was elected, many said that none of us knows what’s going to happen. Trump is unpredictable. But is he? Or are we simply too afraid to face it, to say it? Hope is among the greatest gifts, yet are we aware when hope turns into fear—the fear that paralyses and steals our precious time and our focus when we could do what is right — feeding the hungry, providing shelter for the homeless, protecting the innocent and caring for the less fortunate?

The logic of war is simply destroying everything. And from what Trump is doing, I can already tell — he is at war. And the difference between him and Zelenskyy that we all saw on the screens is the experience of war. Trump will evolve; war does that to people. He just doesn’t understand yet that war can happen to you without choosing or wanting it.