Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
In the heat of this historic moment, images emerge of two leaders whose behavior shows a contradiction between their campaign promises and their actions once in power. Let’s analyze Donald Trump and Claudia Sheinbaum.
Plato asserted that rulers become estranged from those they govern. Montesquieu claimed that impunity corrupts. Machiavelli concluded that the end justifies the means. Trump and Claudia are modern proof that power makes rulers quickly forget why they got there.
Donald Trump campaigned by presenting himself as the candidate of peace. And he offered to be the President of PEACE (yes, in capital letters). He sensed something in the social mood of much of American society, and in his own social base. That mood reflects a weariness with international wars.
Now, Trump, emboldened by his supposed “victory” in Venezuela, is making the mistake of every ruler who forgets his essential rule: don’t get involved in wars you can’t win. But his administration, made up of individuals chosen not for their statesmanship, but for their defiant arrogance and conviction that they can break national and international laws simply because they are Americans with a divine mission to save the world.
In addition, Trump’s internal crises, due to his declining poll numbers and the Epstein episode, are driving him to disguise his problems with an international conflict. This internal political circumstance leads him to forget the banner of peace. But being ethically correct requires permission to use the toy he possesses: the United States’ military might.
He has already “fixed” Venezuela, without any uncomfortable commitments to democracy or human rights. They imposed the “Delcy RodrÃguez model” on the weak Venezuelan opposition as a transition to a new hybrid power, with explicit commitments only to Trump, thereby allowing control of the oil industry as a scheme to initiate a foray into global geopolitics.
That control allows him to prevent the flow of Venezuelan oil to Cuba and China. The management of Cuban energy resources allows him to strangle the island’s economy and prepare it for a political and economic “transition.” Trump talks about being on the verge of causing the collapse of the Cuban regime, but considering how he handled things in Venezuela, there is no guarantee that he will achieve anything beyond a new hybrid and deformed government structure in Cuba. Since he is unwilling to deploy troops to sustain an effective transition, the internal process will be unclear. It could end up being worse than what exists now, which is already very bad.
Iran is the next target. Trump, the President of Peace, is raining bombs on that country, demanding its unconditional surrender and the appointment of a government amenable to Israel and the United States. He also wants to control the flow of Iranian fuel to China. For this reason, the Strait of Hormuz has become the dark object of desire for so many nations: it is the outlet for 20% of all the world’s oil. And Trump is behaving as if he had a moral imperative to destroy that Persian nation and dominate its oil, which is also an additional step toward denying fuel to China.
Trump is driven by his conviction that he has a moral imperative, a superiority of vision, that allows him to act as he does. I am not debating here whether this ethos of superiority is true or not, but I do confirm that he is convinced of his right to wield that hammer of power as far as it will reach.
An ethos of superiority also drives Claudia Sheinbaum. Of course, that ethos does not come from her. She is the heir to Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s conception of the Fourth Transformation. Behind the long historical digressions lies the assumption that López had an epiphany that gave him the mission to save Mexico from an essential evil destroying it from within. That evil and perversion is called “neoliberalism.” The transformative epiphany grants moral superiority to anyone who declares themselves a transformer. It is an act of conviction before religious scriptures, and it is covered by a cloak that reveals the long path of true justice that will be imposed on the country. The correct concept is to impose transformation on the country, even if it does not want it.
With a mission to save the national soul, nothing and no one can be allowed to impede the upward path of cleansing the impurities of the past. Let it be known to all that Mexico is embroiled in a biblical battle between good and evil. The fact is that evil is constantly seeking to tear down the walls of purity that the 4T is laboriously building with all its legislative measures and constitutional reforms. Do not steal, do not lie, do not betray. The prayer comes from the Apocalypse. That is how essential the battle is that the forces of transformation are waging against the diabolical temptation to return to the past of evil, meanness, and exploitation, where the only thing that matters is money, and not beauty or human purity.
Claudia is in charge of fighting this battle for good. She is the great warrior who, wise and inspired, knows which legislative measures must be approved to ensure the continuity of the transformation and prevent the return of the negative forces of the past. The electoral reform she proposes, even if not approved in its current form, is the path to eternal power for her reformist party, inspired by the same epiphany that moved López Obrador to sacrifice himself on the altar of the homeland. It is a morally inspired movement with an ethos that thinks only of the needs of the oppressed of the earth.
Taking over the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation is ethically essential, they will say, to stop the return of the opposition, representatives of the past. From that high jurisdiction, it will be possible to defeat the power of money, corruption, lack of empathy, and those who think only of themselves and their economic and political interests. The pieces are beginning to fit together perfectly. Control of the courts, control over elections, exclusion of the evil opposition from all decisions, and maintenance of unshakeable moral superiority, which admits and allows all necessary actions to be taken to prevent the return of evil to power in Mexico forever.
Neither the lack of accountability, nor the search for the disappeared, nor the femicides, nor the investigation of corrupt politicians, nor the links between politics and drug trafficking should be a cause for concern: it is in the nature of moral superiority, of superior beings with clean souls, who can fly over these dirty swamps without getting dirty. It also allows the 4T to disguise, with diatribes of superiority, its corruption, its commitments to drug trafficking, and its authoritarian drift that seeks to end the alternation of power.
Trump and Claudia/AMLO operate on the same coordinates and with very similar criteria, albeit in different spheres. Both consider themselves morally superior, which they use to disguise their perversities when abusing power. Both have a historic and divine mission to fulfill. For this reason, as long as they maintain mutual respect, but in spheres that barely touch each other, they will be able to operate together. They understand each other and conspire: each sphere of moral superiority respects the other as long as they do not cross paths. But if they were to enter into contradiction or conflict, the confrontation between moral superiorities would be monumental and would provoke anger and the destruction of one by the other.
Both forces put their desire to rule and impose above all else, and without blushing, they forget their promises and dreams to perpetuate themselves in power.
@rpascoep
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