It’s not the economy, it’s not politics, it’s not the international order. That’s all. The world is not like that anymore. Confidence in the functioning of institutions, in systems of checks and balances, in the ability of liberal democracy and the establishment to respond to the ongoing erosion and return things to the old normal is increasingly less secure.
Even if he is defeated at the polls in the future, will we see them reestablish credibility and predictability? Or are we approaching a point of no return to the previous republican order?
Perhaps it would be good to listen to the words of the Canadian Prime Minister, who spoke of rupture and a new world, in Davos. Or from American analysts who are certain that the damage caused by Trump will not be erased, they will leave permanent marks. That post-war Western scenario, of American hegemony, liberal prerogatives, economic globalization, multilateral organizations, is exhausted.
The rise of China, the consolidation of Russia, the weakening of Europe, the imposition of Israel, the end of the UN, the WTO and many other multilateral institutions reflect the scene whose protagonist is the exterminator coming from America. It is the overcoming of the world as we know it from the second half of the 20th century and, particularly, from the post-Soviet period.
The fact that the great eruption —or disruption— through an authoritarian, plutocratic and racist leadership, causes disorientation. Even more so when the leader in question uses and takes advantage of uncertainties and stages his unpredictability to a paroxysm. As noted by , by demonstrating nonconformity with those who insist on everything being normalized, the current situation is challenging. It asks for more than the repetition of concepts and recipes from other times, analysts fighting with categories whose validity crumbles before our eyes.
As the political scientist notes for this column, the fact is that we are in the dark. “The instruments we had from last time no longer work, we are sailing in unknown waters”, he says. “The only way we can try to understand what is happening is through imagination and the use of history, and not being stuck in an analytical box indefinitely to say that everything is the same,” he says.
The comment is also valid for discussions about Brazilian politics, starting with the revolts of the 2010s and the emergence of the Bolsonarist extreme right – with the consequences that last. We see a series of changes in the relations between the Powers, with the Legislative’s progress on the Budget, the Executive’s difficulties in making its agenda prevail and a STF that jumps out of the box like a spring doll.
There are those who also believe, although many do not like it, that some of the instruments for explaining the functioning of the contemporary economy and markets would also be in trouble in these times of Chinese triumph, high technological competition and deglobalization. Everything really adds up when the past, to paraphrase (1805-1859), no longer sheds so much light on the future.
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