Trump’s Opportunism

The U.S. president is trying to take advantage of the massacre in Mexico to rally his supporters and create a smokescreen surrounding the impeachment proceedings.

There are massive doses of opportunism in Donald Trump’s reaction to the murder of nine members of a Mormon community in Mexico, among them six children. The massacre demonstrates the need to build the wall, Trump says, one year away from the U.S. presidential election, showing gross contempt for the sovereignty of his southern neighbor by offering military aid to combat the drug cartels that neither President Andrés Manuel López Obrador nor anyone else in Mexico has requested.

Oblivious to the most elementary political conventions, Trump’s behavior displays a strange degradation of the president’s role, which has the objective of bringing together his stalwart supporters through increasingly populist jargon and attitude. He is convinced that neutralizing the effects of impeachment, and the path toward a second term, require constant shock treatment.

Sickening Exploitation

“Why, in some circumstances, does evidence of mendacity, crudeness, or cruelty serve not as a fatal disadvantage but as an allure, attracting ardent followers?” Harvard Professor Stephen Greenblatt ponders in his latest book. The response lies in the emotional mechanisms Trump triggers to get to November 2020 quickly and with as little damage as possible. Damaging his relationship with a permanent U.S. ally such as Mexico, or worsening the effects of the universal crisis associated with migration flows, matters little if, as seems to be the case, he keeps the public addicted to the cause. Nor is it worth considering that such attitudes violate ideals that are part of the average citizen’s political certainties.

Drug trafficking has plunged Mexico into a state of war that is dramatic and costly enough that no one, even President Trump, should feel tempted to use it for his or her own benefit. Doing so constitutes a sickening exploitation of the victims.