In the good book, the Evangelist promises “a new heaven and a new earth” with the Second Coming of Christ.
For now, what we can see is that the second coming of Donald J. Trump promises to bring with it a new earth alright, leaving the subject of a new heaven for theological disputation as may or may not be allowed by considerations of tariff.
This new earth interestingly promises to strike a return to an older one – one that predates not just the Enlightenment but also the Treaty of Westphalia which gave us nation states from the warring entrails of free-ranging empires that, like the Mammoths and Dinosaurs of old sought constantly to enhance their lebensraum over prairie and savanna, using tooth and claw to eliminate lesser species from the reckoning.
Come the ides of March, 2025, the regime of reason that began to take hold among aspirants to political power from about the middle of the eighteenth century, now exhausted by a capitalism gone berserk with the power of technology, yields legitimacy back to the Caesars, Calgulas, Neros, and sundry Fuhrers of our time.
The monarchs who were once challenged and defeated in favour of representative and constitutional verities return through the very same ballot that was meant to eradicate their unauthorised gumption.
Those that have mountains of wealth are exempt from answerability and are deputed to run governments without let or hindrance from pusillanimous busy bodies arguing the principle of representative governance.
They wield their ownership and sway of technologies as prime justifications for rule, as the gods once wielded thunderbolts, and sundry dreadful areenals unchallengeable by mere mortals.
So, as a good Canadian said the other day, tariffs are meant to further not economic gains but purposes of empire – to weaken the pretender state next door enough so it may be annexed.
Same for poor Panama, Greenland, and now, Gaza too.
Also read: A Golden Statue, Elon Musk Enjoying Hummus and More: AI Video Reveals Trump’s Gaza Vision
Nowhere does the matter of the people’s will count as a factor anymore.
And, as the post second World War global order, comprising pretenders such as the United Nations and the plethora of rule-based international organisations become eschatological refuse, the Mammoth and the Dinosaur on one side of the globe accords the recognition of puissance to the Mammoth and the Dinosaur on the other side, saying ‘I keep mine, you keep yours’.
If there are piteous noises seeking justice in scattered portions here, there, elsewhere, why we shall among ourselves see how best the dispensable meek and morally grovelling timid may be eased out of their pietistic misery, reinstalling the Roman and Aryan master races, proud in muscle and blood-letting.
So, Putin ought to have Ukraine, Israel all the lands between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean, China Taiwan (if follows) and so on, which leaves patriotic Indians, progeny of the original Vishwa Guru, sulking in shamefaced diminution being so cavalierly ignored out of the new reckoning; and isn’t such indifference more cutting than a forthright confrontation?
But then, we too have our choices, newly of more lebensraum; did not the honourable minister of external affairs recall how that POK remains our unfinished agenda?
And wasn’t the chief minister of the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir to be applauded for demanding more than a mere declaration of intent in the matter?
Tailpiece
Way back in 1787, Thomas Jefferson was asked if he would prefer to have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government: he took not a minute to say, if the choice had to be made, he would take the latter.
Were Trump to be asked to choose between executive order without Congress or Congress without executive order, is there a doubt what he would say? And all the new Caesars of our day too.
Indeed, the world might now await a new revolution in which the gathering tornados, cyclones, hurricanes, forest fires, floating icebergs, rising seas join with the new predators to engulf this earth era, churning the soil for a kinder species of animal and man not hitherto known.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
