What Europeans Don’t Understand about Trump

While Americans have lived every day with the consequences of the Biden presidency, Europeans have felt these as a more remote matter, even though they are nearer to one of them, namely the war still being waged on Europe’s eastern doorstep. This remoteness makes many of them incredulous that Donald Trump is back, and back with a vengeance. The things that so many Europeans do not understand about President-elect Trump could in fact, if written down, fill a five-volume set, but here I should like to concentrate on three things, with the first two being closely related: Europe’s post-historical nature, its moral purism, and its relative lack of positive visions. I shall treat them in this order.

As I have written in various contexts, all of Europe except the east has been off the geopolitical stage of storm and stress for many decades now. I will not repeat here the full point about Europe that I have made from the point of view of the philosophy of history, but suffice it to say that European countries have ceased to be great, historical powers, and, this being the case, that Europe’s influence on world events is minimal. As a result, Europeans have forgotten that politics is, in its most heightened form, a matter of life and death. While no one in Tehran or Beijing particularly cares who sits in the Riksdag in Stockholm, or even in the Paris Elysée or Bundestag in Berlin, who sits in the White House in Washington, D.C. makes an enormous difference, since America is at an earlier historical stage than Europe and is still a great power.

While I, like many, considered the former President’s victory the likelier outcome, I was still nervous about the possibility of an upset by Vice President Kamala Harris, and a German friend of mine told me to relax, saying that, after all, it’s “only politics.” And I pointed out to him that in his country, politics is indeed only politics, while in mine politics is a matter of life and death around the world, reminding him that because President Trump lost in 2020, Russian forces were encroaching upon eastern Europe, with deaths well in excess of a hundred thousand, over a thousand Jews were slaughtered in Israel, and Afghan women were enslaved and Afghan gays stoned to death.

"...those who have real responsibility tend to understand that moral purism is impractical."

That is, many Europeans, because they themselves no longer exercise world influence, have forgotten that the world needs a strong America to hold things together. Having forgotten this, it is easy to concentrate on lesser things, such as Trump’s sometimes crude jokes or other seemingly offensive remarks. Worrying about a leader’s meanness or gruff ribaldry is a luxury that post-historical peoples have, historical ones not.