In the Country of Fear

A few months ago, I went to New York to record a story on Donald Trump. I took advantage of the occasion to visit, for the first time, the museum that is in remembrance of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Constructed at the heart of the Twin Towers, the museum is a dismal and solemn cavern. The warped iron, the voices of the survivors and the faces of those who were lost communicate a certain kind of anguish that has no parallel in our time. Of course, there have been other major contemporary horrors, but nothing that can compare to the theatrical caliber of Sept. 11, the attack’s magnitude or its audiovisual repetition (“The moment in where all the world was scared at the same time,” Antonio Navalon memorably said to me).

Out of the whole museum, I am left with one memory from the exhibition. It’s not of the famous cross made from the building’s beams, nor the firetruck that is crushed in like a tin toy. Instead, I think about the chaotic fusion of materials called “the composite.” The collapse of the towers was so violent that some of the building’s floors were blown into pieces of iron, concrete and who knows what other materials. The result is something that seems like a meteorite; a deformed representation that focuses on pain. That day in the museum, I was left looking at it for a few minutes, trying to freeze the silhouette of some intact object. This object was supposed to resemble order or peace. I only found anguish, in a form that I had been unfamiliar up until that point. To be frank, I was scared.

I’m recalling my visit to this southern Manhattan museum so I can try to explain what will happen with Donald Trump and, after him, to U.S. politics in general. What factor can explain what has happened? One of them, of course, is the frivolousness of the United States’ culture. Here’s a revealing fact: in the year 2000, there were four reality shows on TV in America. Today, there are closer to 200. To this, we need to add the polarization of the news and the effect of social networks, rarely favorable, to say the least, for tolerant discussions. This result is a broth perfect for cultivating populist hysterics. Trump, and all those who support him, are the collective manifestation of the one element that shook me up so much in the Sept. 11 museum: fear.

Sept. 11 introduced a terrorist threat to the U.S. psyche. Perhaps it is worth remembering that before 2001 – and maybe 1993 at the same WTC – the continental territory of the United States had only suffered one planned attack from the outside, perpetrated by a certain Pancho Villa in 1916. It’s easy to say, but the feeling of invulnerability in this country changed forever 15 years ago. One of the many consequences was on the political stage, where fear began to play a very important role in decision making, from the polemic intelligence strategy all the way to the invasion of Iraq. This strategy was shamelessly promoted by George W. Bush, with fear as the main “argument.”

Ever since then, fear has surrounded American public life, threatening it and driving the American people permanently mad. In fact, fear has been kept on the margin of U.S. concerns and electoral incentives only because a sufficiently shameless politician had not sprung forth to try to truly take advantage of it and because there were no new attacks on U.S. territory. Both things have changed in the second half of 2015. Donald Trump’s rhetoric kept returning to fear: fear of immigrants, fear of other’s economic power, fear of the Islamic State and fear of all Muslims. Trump’s message could not be any clearer – American lives are being threatened and terror, true terror, is just around the corner. This all has to do with irrational fear. You are more likely to die from syphilis than a terrorist attack. But fear is reason’s natural enemy, which Trump knows and he senses it well. Thus, the success of his strategy is explained, and much more now that reality has given him a justification with the San Bernardino massacre.

It is here Trump has strengthened his path to the Republican candidacy. The horror in San Bernardino appears to have justified his exclusionary and prejudiced rhetoric. Following the same path will be complicated, so much so that the Republican Party must maneuver to elect a different candidate. Logic indicates that if Trump wins the Republican nomination, Hillary Clinton will be within arm’s reach of the keys to the White House. But we must be careful. Fear, latent in U.S. society for 15 long years, seems to have begun to awaken. Underestimating its convening power would be a mistake. Not to mention what could happen if reality, which recently has been so cruel, has another episode of blood and horror in store for the United States. If so, every man for himself.