Trump and Milei, or Government by chain saw

The scariest question that pops up when thinking about a second Donald Trump presidency is, “How bad can it get?” Many commentators say it means the end of American democracy as we know it and the end of the vision of a liberal society—an American Dream of social justice and economic well-being inaugurated by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Trump himself does not spell out in detail what he might do in practice, keeping his campaign harangues to racist and anti-“woke” generalities, promises of tax cuts, personal insults, and standard pro-business talk. Two sources, however, provide a pretty good indication of what he would do: first, the right-wing think tanks’ roadmaps for Trump, such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025; and second, the actions and rhetoric of Javier Milei, the president of Argentina since his election in November 2023.

Milei’s Basic Law and Project 2025

Milei, a narcissistic and megalomaniacal libertarian, is the first Trump administration on steroids—what they both stand for and want to implement is perfectly portrayed in Milei’s slogan: “Government by Chain Saw.” Government by chain saw is evident in what Milei submitted for approval to the Argentine Congress as the Ley de Bases (link is external) (Basic Law), made up of 234 articles. The Basic Law was approved by the Chamber of Deputies in June 2024 and by a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. Opposition by labor unions and street protestors began in reaction to the quickly worsening economic situation (link is external) for the lower and middle classes (link is external) brought on by Milei’s measures. The political class, however, faced with the budgetary and prosecutorial power of the presidency, has chosen to align with Milei’s policies rather than with the nation’s best interests.

Given their ideological similarities, much of Milei’s agenda overlaps with what Trump would likely execute in one way or another if reelected. In their recent, much-discussed conversation on X, Trump and Elon Musk (link is external) praised Milei’s economic and social policies, celebrating his mass firing of government employees and drastic reduction of government programs. (They failed to mention that the cuts are primarily in education, health care, and social services.) The Basic Law’s salient elements are:

• Declaration of a state of national emergency for one year to administratively enact the administration’s new agenda in energy policy, economic policy, and finance.
• Additional executive powers to take whatever actions are necessary to implement the Basic Law.
• Privatization of natural resources and major state companies, including infrastructure, which basically means a fire sale to Wall Street.¹
• Closing down public institutions like public TV and public radio and support for other cultural institutions (akin to shuttering NPR, PBS, and the National Endowment for the Arts in the US).
• Defunding public universities and the CONICET (National Scientific Research Council).
• Labor reform that would make firings easier and less costly to employers.
• Tax reform that would reduce taxes for those with higher wealth and income.
• Tax haven pardons, meaning that those who have not reported income and wealth held abroad, and have thus avoided taxes, will pay only 2.5 percent over five years on what they now declare—basically a lifetime Christmas gift to tax cheats.
• Loss of Argentine judicial sovereignty by granting jurisdiction to non-Argentine tribunals (read U.S. courts) for any commercial disputes or investment disputes arising from privatization.
• Cancelation of Argentine legislation and judicial standing over all environmental aspects of investment in mining, oil, and gas by foreign corporations.
• Defunding environmental protection programs, canceling the protection of native forests, and ending the requirement for public audiences in granting environmental impact approvals.
• Granting the federal executive the right to restructure or close down provincial or regional government agencies, such as those involved in environmental protection, as it sees fit.

In addition, Milei and his interior minister, Patricia Bullrich, have adopted a tough-on-protestors policy, with forceful police crackdowns against picketing and demonstrations.

Milei ‘s ideology was shaped by the economists Friedrich Hayek and Murray Rothbard (link is external), a founder of the U.S. Libertarian Party (link is external), and it shares libertarianism’s radical distrust of the state and faith that markets know best. On social matters, Milei mirrors Trump in opposing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs (link is external) and abortion. He aligns perfectly with the traditional Argentine right’s nationalistic Catholicism and its sympathy for heavy police repression to the point of supporting outright military dictatorship—sympathy echoed in Trump’s desire to deploy the U.S. military (link is external) against domestic civilian protestors. And like Trump, Milei is quick to label as “communist” any political opponent who advocates income redistribution through taxation of the wealthiest or an industrial policy that does not favor carbon-based energy. Of course, the alliance between libertarian economics and authoritarian rule is an old story—the “Chicago Boys,” Latin American economists in thrall to Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economic thought, figured prominently in the regime of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet (link is external).

Compare Milei’s program with what the Project 2025 (PDF file)(link is external) “180-day playbook” (titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise) is proposing that Trump implement, as summarized by Steve Corbin (link is external):

The 30 chapters of Project 2025 are a daunting read. Project 2025 proposes, among a host of things, eliminating the Department of Education, eliminating the Department of Commerce, deploying the U.S. military whenever protests erupt, dismantling the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, removing [protections against] sexual and gender . . . discrimination and terminating diversity, equity, [and] inclusion and affirmative action.

Additional mandates include: Siphoning billions from public school funding, funding private school choice vouchers, phasing out public education’s Title I program [which funds, among other things, support services for students struggling to meet grade-level expectations in math and reading], gutting the nation’s free school meals program, eliminating the Head Start program, [and] banning books and suppressing any curriculum that discusses the evils of slavery.

Project 2025 also calls for: Banning abortion (which makes women second-class citizens), restricting access to contraception, forcing would-be immigrants to be detained in concentration camps, eliminating Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act [which prohibit, respectively, employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin; and sex-based discrimination in educational programs and activities], recruiting 54,000 loyal MAGA Republicans to replace existing federal civil servants, and ending America’s bedrock principle that separates church from state.

Could Trump implement this roadmap by declaring an autocracy-friendly “state of emergency,” as Milei’s Basic Law does? Note that U.S. federal law (link is external) does provide for the president to declare a national emergency (link is external). President Trump already used this power to fund and build his wall on the border with Mexico after Congress denied funding for it. Furthermore, short of the formal declaration of national emergency, U.S. presidents have a lot of executive power—Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War—and an ability to act quickly and decisively. This is even more so today: the recent Supreme Court immunity decision (link is external) definitely gives broad latitude to presidents, with a presumption of immunity for “official acts” (and outright immunity for “core powers of their office.”)

Both Milei’s and Trump’s programs seek to concentrate economic and political power in the plutocracies already in place, to restrict progressive social practices, to eliminate longstanding rights like abortion, and to restrict political freedoms as they dismantle the checks and balances of democratic government in favor of autocratic rule. Their culturally repressive and nationalistic social policies, which motivate large sectors of the electorate, serve to obfuscate and to ease the continuing transfer of wealth, and of economic and political power, to those who already have it.

Argentina is a country of forty-six million people with a strong economic history (PDF file)(link is external) prior to its debt defaults. At the beginning of the twentieth century Argentina was one of the world’s wealthiest (PDF file)(link is external) countries, outgrowing Canada and Australia (link is external) in population and total and per capita income. By the mid-twentieth century its per capita GDP was higher than that of Italy, Japan, and Spain. Since then, things have gone downhill in general terms, with wealth creation concentrating in those who control agricultural land and production, and mining and industrial production aligned with U.S. interests. Despite its erratic economy, Argentina has been able to uphold until now a strong intellectual tradition in literature, science, and the arts. Its public universities and research centers have produced scientists responsible for important breakthroughs in their fields, though many of them have had to work in the U.S. or Europe to escape from the various fascistic and antisemitic military dictatorships that plagued the country in the second half of the twentieth century. How, then, to explain the phenomenon of Milei, a somewhat mad personage, who, like Trump, would by any rational consideration or standard of good governance seem precluded from becoming the leader of a twenty-first-century nation?

Both have been elected by democratic procedures, and thus, in principle, are supposed to embody the will of the people. How can the people get it so wrong at the ballot box? What makes the people vote against their own best interests, unable to see what is not so difficult to read between the lines of campaign harangues? How could somebody like Milei get elected, or Trump—given all that we know about him—get re-elected? They are like characters from Latin-American magical realist novels, as if created by Alejo Carpentier or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, figures exaggerated for dramatic effect. What is it about them that makes them appealing to the mass of voters?

Milei was elected president of Argentina by 55.7 percent (link is external) of the vote. Before becoming president, he taught economics and was active as a political commentator and polemicist on TV. In 2021 he was elected to the National Congress representing the City of Buenos Aires. His “doctorate,” granted in 2022, is honoris causa (link is external) from a second-rate business school run by one of his cronies. He gained popularity with a simple message that obviously appealed to the middle class and working class disappointed with the Peronists: change—do away with the failures and broken promises and disappointments of the Peronist governments of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and, primarily, of her successor, Alberto Fernández. During Alberto Fernández’s term in office, runaway inflation made life for working-class families increasingly difficult. That is not supposed to happen under a self-defined pro-working-class party carrying forward the spirit of Juan Perón’s social justice reforms and economic nationalism, and this inflation caused many voters who formerly voted for Peronists (link is external), and were disillusioned with their unkept promises, to vote for Milei. Peronists are a loose constellation of different political inclinations, ranging from right to left, but are united by reverence for Juan Domingo Perón and his policy of nationalistic independence from the world powers. Perón, a former general, extended his power base in the military to the industrial working class and ruled with the support of labor unions, which he both supported and controlled. He is remembered for having greatly raised the standard of living and for recognizing the dignity of workers.

The majority of the middle-class and lower middle-class electorate became convinced that the current wave of Peronists stayed in power because of their “clientelist” policies, that is, payouts and subsidies to people in order to get their vote, rather than by actually improving the lives of real working people like themselves, which Perón did accomplish during his initial government (1946—1952). Driven by Argentina’s Fox News—like media, an anti-Peronist narrative took hold in public opinion, demonizing people who supposedly do not work or who have government jobs where they do nothing—not even showing up at their fake jobs except on payday. It disparages those who live in villas miserias and favelas (shanty towns) and allegedly make life difficult by blocking the roads with pickets (the so-called piqueteros), and by terrorizing residents of middle-class neighborhoods with violent crime. The government, the anti-Peronist narrative continues, should focus on cracking down on corruption and crime, lowering inflation, and reducing taxes on hard-working people rather than providing handouts to the undeserving poor. Argentines wanted change in government because it hasn’t responded to their needs, regardless of which of the traditional parties have ruled. The fact that 55 percent of voters voted for Milei shows the extent of their disillusionment. In his campaign, Milei presented himself as the providential doer who could fix the country, the Great Man required to mend a broken system. Reality is proving different. Six months after assuming power, over 53 percent (link is external) of people surveyed disapproved of his government, while 47 percent approved.

Trump and Milei’s Winning Formula

In a February 2024 talk, Lawrence Rosenthal (link is external), the chair of UC Berkeley’s Center for Right-Wing Studies, pointed out two reasons for Trump’s success: first, the creation of a devoted political constituency defined in opposition to an enemy, an Other that threatens the nation’s life, as delineated in the work of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt; and second, “replacement theory,” which casts the Other as foreign aliens who come en masse to replace the legitimate original citizens, and whose invasion is enabled by an equally treacherous domestic ideological enemy in the form of the “woke” or progressive left. Rosenthal vividly describes how Trump has expertly deployed such rhetoric. The same strategy has brought Milei to power.

The irony is that finance-driven capitalism creates poverty, but the middle class identify the cause of their pauperization and downward plight as dispossession by immigrants or welfare recipients rather than caused by a system of short-term profit-maximization above all else, which keeps them bound to just-making-it jobs through debt-driven consumerism.

There is another element that needs emphasizing. Milei and Trump are performers. They generate their following by their performances, amplified by a willing mass media and the boom box of social media. In today’s celebrity-crazed world, that’s critical. They promise and they entertain; and they project themselves as heroic figures doing battle against incompetence and evil. Trump learned this early as a playboy real estate mogul on the New York scene and “author” (link is external) of the 1987 book The Art of the Deal, and he perfected it as a TV personality with The Apprentice. Milei is following suit with his insults to Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez and colorful name-calling of opposition politicians. A macho image helps. It’s in the tradition of Mussolini trotting with his chest puffed out, Putin riding a horse in Siberia bare-chested, and—as pure entertainment—the tough-guy heroism of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. The entertainment value Milei and Trump provide has a lot to do with their appeal. They promise bread and deliver the circus of their public antics—they are performers in the full Hollywood sense of the term. See Trump’s scowl on his mug shot, or watch Milei belting out rock and roll in a leather outfit at his Luna Park celebration in Buenos Aires. It is through their performances, their circus acts, that Trump and Milei activate joy in their crowds (link is external), and thus loyalty. By acting out what the Leader wants, however mad it may be, the crowd reaffirms its beliefs and its identity. Their numbers provide them legitimacy, attention, and a sense of virtue. Trump understands this and it is why he keeps insisting the crowds at his events are bigger than they actually are. The comradery and collective feeling generated by being part of a movement strongly motivates the like-minded multitude, and drives it to do whatever extremist acts its leader suggests. Gustave Le Bon describes this dynamic in his classic work Psychologie des foules (The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, 1895).

Unrecognized in this process is the irony of libertarian values—the celebration of free individuals—promoted and imposed on society by the actions of crowd mentality: the very individuality being proclaimed by libertarians is canceled by their participation and melding in an exalted mass.

Milei, like Trump, also plays the savior card. Whereas Trump promotes himself as a godsend protecting us against a swarthy horde of rapists, killers, and lunatics invading across the U.S.-Mexico border (see, for example, his recent interview with Musk), Milei sees himself as a prophet, defending capitalism from the heathen hordes of welfarism. He sets himself up as a right-wing champion of economic liberty, an uber-capitalist ideologue urging on the real capitalists at the World Economic Forum in Davos (link is external) and in his repeated trips to meet with U.S. CEOs and billionaires like Elon Musk (link is external) and Mark Zuckerberg (link is external).

Their savior complex works because in the popular imagination they are like Greek gods rather than the perfect God in that neither is perfect, and that is part of their appeal. It makes them approachable by the masses who identify with their frailties. In Trump’s case, his womanizing, even his sexual assaults, make him relatable to many. In Milei’s case, his eccentricities—for example, his avowed love for his four cloned dogs (link is external), which he treats as if they were his children, or his would-be rock star gig at Luna Park (link is external)—do him no harm and somehow serve to humanize him in his followers’ eyes. He is the super erudite economist who has the answer to all their problems, and the courageous warrior fighting with his symbolic chain saw against the bad people of the villas(like Trump raging against MS-13 and immigrant criminals from south of the border), but he is also likeable rather than aloof because of his imperfections.

In Sophocles’ play Ajax, the goddess Athena makes the war hero Ajax go crazy because she is upset he has not sought her help and blessing; in retaliation, she helps Odysseus receive the honors Ajax should have gotten. Though she is the goddess of war and of practical reason, her unjust favoritism shows she is not perfect, that she has an identifiable human frailty. Similarly, Zeus, head god and ruler of Mount Olympus, lording over all, was also very busy coupling with women, whether they be goddesses or mortals, despite being married to Hera. This is another human trait people can relate to, and one that obviously does not hurt Trump’s status as divinely ordained (link is external), a “modern-day Cyrus,” (link is external) in the eyes of his admirers. Rather, it allows for identification of the masses with the leader. Milei actually identifies himself as a biblical figure and professes to study the Torah (link is external). One of his best-known sayings (link is external) is: “Yo no vine acá a guiar corderos. Vine a despertar leones” [I haven’t come here to guide lambs but to awaken lions]. Another, straight out of the Book of Macabees, is: “El triunfo en la guerra no viene de la cantidad de soldados, sino de las fuerzas que vienen del cielo” [Triumph in war doesn’t come from how many soldiers you have but from the forces of heaven]. Trump, in the aftermath of his attempted assassination, says divine intervention is what saved him—obviously he wants his followers to see him as God’s chosen, and they seem to buy into this.

Also, like the Greek gods, Trump and Milei are transgressors. They reject the established norms of political civility and presidential conduct. Their disruptive personalities require absolute loyalty, but it’s a one-way street—both of them publicly revile and insult their closest staff when things don’t go their way and go out of their way to insult political leaders they don’t like. Milei has directly and in very personal terms insulted the presidents (link is external) of Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, China, and even the United States. His insults against Spain’s prime minister, while visiting the country, created a diplomatic crisis. No matter. Rather than this kind of behavior hurting Milei and Trump, both have benefited from their transgressions. Why? Because their message is change, draining the swamp in Washington, DC, in Trump’s case, or chain-sawing out the Peronists and their ilk in Milei’s case. And so their personal transgressions are seen as buttressing their change message. By transgressing norms, not being like all the other politicians, embodying difference, they become the personification of change, and this adds credence to their message—this correspondence in people’s minds works in Trump’s and Milei’s favor, however weird it seems to those who don’t buy into it.

The combination of naming the enemy Other, conjuring fears of parasitical “takers” and dangerous immigrants, cultivating a larger-than-life persona as someone divinely ordained to do great things, possessing relatable human frailties, and transgressing norms in a way that signals change to voters—that’s Trump and Milei’s winning formula. Here’s how they instantiate it, giving rise to similar political communities of the faithful:

The faithful, in both cases, feel justified in applying the chain saw to the evil ones, who because they are evil no longer have a claim to humanity and humane consideration (a point stressed in Rosenthal’s talk earlier this year). Normal politics, rational deliberation, the give-and-take of democratic process do not apply when dealing with the evil ones. Though not explicitly stated as such, the poor are understood to be poor due to their own failings. In the libertarian world, the loser deserves to lose and is not to be rescued but rather left to suffer or even chain-sawed away like a gangrenous limb, sometimes with literal violence. The loser loses all rights, the winner takes all because by being a winner he or she deserves it, by definition. This way of framing the matter serves to excuse not delivering on promises, which is never the fault of Trump or Milei. If you are not getting what you expected it is because you haven’t worked hard enough, done what you ought to have done, or whatever. Most likely, it is because the Other has prevented you from getting it, therefore your frustration is redirected onto the enemy, rather than back on the heroic leader. By this pernicious subterfuge, the autocratic libertarian ruler is immunized from blame for nonperformance. All grievances are targeted at the enemy. It gets even worse: having thwarted the leader, the enemy has earned increasing violence; the chain saw must be put to work harder and longer to get the job done.

The chain saw exacts retribution, supplies a nostrum for the resentment of imagined dispossession, and intimidates opponents. Questioning the number killed during the military dictatorship (link is external) from 1974 to 1983, Milei is seeking to pardon the military personnel and torturers who are responsible for the thirty thousand estimated to have been “disappeared,” that is, murdered, during the “Dirty War,” Argentina’s campaign of state terrorism. Similarly, Trump is getting ready to pardon all those guilty of invading the U.S. Capitol by force and threatening to hang Mike Pence on the Capitol steps. As a result, Trump may be able to call on them again, happy to have them serve as his shock troops, presumably immune from legal consequence.

History gets rewritten in order to justify Chain Saw Government, which becomes a kind of permanent state of emergency, martial law in disguise. This is how bad it can get.

Reactions to Milei after the Honeymoon Months

People in Argentina are beginning to worry that Milei’s coalition, La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances), is as bad as the Peronists, given ongoing inflation and a Milei-created recession, which now rivals that during the COVID-19 pandemic. This economic distress is distancing Milei from many provincial governors who at first backed him, notably in the provinces of Misiones, Córdoba, and La Pampa, and in Patagonia. During the first six months of 2024, inflation remained high, despite the hard recession from Milei’s restrictive fiscal policies and increasing unemployment. According to the National Statistics Bureau (INDEC), as of the end of July 2024 (PDF file)(link is external) the consumer price index (IPC) had risen 263 percent over the past year, and 87 percent over the past 6 months, with housing, water, gas, and electricity rising the most, followed by health care. The Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Services (Cámara Argentina de Comercio y Servicios) reports that household consumption has fallen (PDF file)(link is external) 5.3 percent in the first six months of 2024. Based on INDEC data, construction activity during the period also fell by 35.2 percent(link is external).

The following report (link is external) appeared on May 26, 2024, in Ámbito Financiero(an Argentine newspaper akin to the Wall Street Journal).

The president of Banco Provincia, Juan Cuattromo, directly blamed the adjustment of Javier Milei’s government for the abrupt drop in consumption: “This occurs in a context where inflation rose almost 110% between December and April and had a greater impact on private consumption, as a consequence of the current government’s contractionary fiscal and exchange rate policy and the greater increase in prices of prime goods.” . . . He didn’t stop there. “This brutal adjustment and the recessive policies of this government do not impact the upper classes or the political powers but rather the middle classes and the most vulnerable and defenseless sectors of society,” Cuattromo declared.

A poll from August 2024 (link is external) shows most Argentines (93 percent) say the middle class and lower class are the ones hit by Milei’s economic policies, not la casta(read the Peronist swamp) he was supposed to get rid of. Fiscal restraint, induced recession, and induced unemployment to reduce inflation are easy to enact. Following that up with economic revival, that’s the tough one. Nobody, not even pro-Milei businesspeople, believes in a V-shaped recovery. Add to that the libertarian anti-Keynesian ideology that avoids government intervention in the economy to stimulate demand and it’s anybody’s guess how long the real economy—as opposed to financial operations—will flutter in the doldrums.

The most telling item is perhaps the exchange rate between the Argentine peso and the U.S. dollar (USD). For the past fifty years, Argentines have mostly bet against the peso, choosing to hold and invest in U.S. dollars. The first few months after Milei’s ascension to power, the black-market exchange rate stalled relative to its usual devaluation (it decreased less than 10 percent between January 1, 2024, and May 23, 2024, which is unusual). Argentina’s financial risk (as measured by the price of Argentina’s dollar-denominated bonds over the price of the 10-year U.S. government bond) improved, falling below 1000 basis points, meaning below 10 percent over the 10-year U.S. government bond, with Wall Street also buying stocks on MERVAL (the Buenos Aires stock exchange). Milei’s standing benefited from the exchange rate stability with financial markets in Buenos Aires and New York betting on him and his politics. Those in the know—that is, controlling the betting—were able to make a net gain of about 80 percent in USD terms in the first four months of 2024 by betting on the peso, simply leaving money in Argentine bank peso deposits, which averaged a 90 percent increase in pesos during this period. The financial feast began to unravel, and as the public began to feel the impact of fiscal austerity with recession and continuing inflation, the financial community in Buenos Aires and Wall Street started to take note. As of this writing (August 2024), country risk is back up to 1493, which is nearly a 50 percent increase relative to Milei’s first months in power—which means a deterioration of the state’s borrowing capacity (the higher the number, the higher the country risk and its cost to borrow). In short, as the peso goes, so goes Milei—he is being devalued.

If this continues, and I see no reason why it will not, Milei will lose popular backing. However, the damage will have been done, the Basic Law having been promulgated and put into action, with Milei legally capable of enforcing it with the enlarged power of the executive, the loyalty of the police, and a disempowered Congress. At some point living conditions will become so hard for a large enough part of the population that strikes, social unrest, and riots are bound to happen. How much repression will be needed to control the disorder will determine whether the right-wing elite that has backed him so far will continue to do so and let him chain-saw his way forward, or allow him to be replaced by a figurehead who will create less backlash. This is anybody’s guess. One previous president, Fernando de la Rua, had to flee the Casa Rosada (Argentina’s White House) by helicopter when social conflict came to a head. That was during the throes of the economic crisis of 2001. Perhaps that will be Milei’s fate too.

A Different Outcome for Trump

While Trump and Milei are alike in how they gain power, the conditions for their remaining in power are very dissimilar. What will bring Milei down are the faults of his economic prescriptions. Argentina’s economy cannot be righted by austerity, by reliance on foreign investment invited in on giveaway terms, and by taking on more foreign debt at exorbitant interest rates. On the other hand, if Trump returns to the presidency, he has the advantage of the U.S. economy. He will be kept afloat by its economic strength, buoyant thanks to the U.S. dollar’s exorbitant privilege, allowing the U.S. to print money while exporting the inflation effect elsewhere; by the US’s dominant position in technology and energy, and its self-sufficiency in food; and by virtue of having largely nonunionized working and lower-middle classes (including both legal and illegal immigrants), whose low wages subsidize the well-being of its upper-middle and upper classes. Corporate America was happy with the first Trump administration for his tax cuts and his regulatory cuts. Since he would continue in this direction in a second term, the corporate establishment would likely ignore and remain silent about whatever chain-saw measures he were to take against civil rights and the normal administration of government; and a Republican-dominated Congress, beholden to corporate and billionaire money, would support Trump rather than block him.

What, Then, about Democracy?

The election of Trump in 2016, of Milei in 2023, and now the prospect of Trump’s reelection in 2024 are so against the common good that one cannot but question whether the popular vote is any longer a viable way of picking government leaders if what one hopes for are governments that are willing and able to tackle our existential challenges: climate catastrophe with its inevitable climate-driven migrations; the increasing danger of a nuclear World War III, intentional or by miscalculation or accident; and humane living conditions for most people, which requires an economy that provides decent jobs for those of working age, affordable and accessible health care for all, and the peace of mind of not having to guard against ever-present violence, including police violence as well as violent crime.

What would make me regain faith in elections? If and only if progressive parties and constituencies in the U.S. and in Europe come to realize that to win elections in our internet-driven and celebrity-crazed world it takes a charismatic populist-sounding politician who knows how to cater to the popular imagination. The Democratic Party has realized that “Get out the vote” calls in favor of unappealing and genocide-abetting (link is external) candidate Joe Biden will not cut it, regardless of how rational and middle-class-oriented his domestic political platform may be. In nominating Kamala Harris, the Dems have realized that what is needed are the right kind of policies fronted by the right kind of candidate—somebody with charm who can generate celebrity and acclaim. If she clearly broadcasts substantive pro-working-class and pro-middle-class economic and social policies, and in debating Trump shows she can put the two-bit bully in his place, she stands a good chance of winning the popular vote by enough to win the Electoral College. Otherwise, we are in for a second—perhaps even a third—Trump administration, and for more of the far right in Europe. And that, yes, will be the end of the kind of well-ordered, justice-seeking, humane societies many of us thought we, our children, and our grandchildren would be living in.

Notes:

1. ↩ This neoliberal prescription was also put in place under Carlos Menem (link is external)(president of Argentina from 1989 to 1999) by finance minister Domingo Cavallo, who instituted a fixed convertibility regime of 1 Argentine peso = 1 U.S. dollar, which led to the economic collapse of 2002. The military dictatorship in Argentina (PDF file)(link is external) during the 1970s also favored privatizing state companies, a policy executed by finance minister José Martínez de Hoz.