(pode ler este artigo em português aqui)

We’ve already said goodbye to 2016 and arrived at the dawn of the inauguration of our unloved circus peanut as President of the United States of America. If there were an original joke to write about this appearing to be a scene out of a movie, I would write one, but there isn’t. We already know who the next “leader of the free world” (for as much controversy as that phrase involves) is and what he stands for.

Setting the scene of the beginning of 2017 is the triumph of the rejection of “technocracy” in favor of simplistic and nationalistic responses to the changes that the progression of globalization has brought to the fore. It no longer matters what experts say with regard to the worldwide consequences of this phenomenon, since they are the easiest scapegoat for all of the problems in our economies and their inability to reallocate and reinvent workers faced against forces that know no national boundaries. This is the point from which we arrived at Trump and Brexit. The pre-existing order of the West has been profoundly altered.

The most accurate word for this phenomenon would be decadence.

Not just in the sense of decline, but also the confrontation with the failures of the system. How are we going to tell the factory worker—whether from Lincolnshire or Michigan—that their life’s work not only is never coming back, but that it was in fact substituted entirely by gains in productivity thanks to new technology and machines? By appealing to vainglory, ignoring the facts and complications of real life, because that’s what they want to hear. Decadence resides in their reaction to the false promises and the snake oil they’ve bought.

But why, then, decadence? Let’s call it that for the decline of public service, which is the point of any political position. The current discourse, arising as much in Trump as in Europe’s simmering populism, is, at heart, an appeal to a simplistic image of government functioning. Governing is not a simple task. Appealing to a fantasy of a government-turned-machine in the service of enriching those of the majority left behind is simple. Governance is not capable of pleasing everyone at once. Populism’s purpose is to say the words that it hopes will please everyone in that majority. It’s decadent because it defrauds the proper principles of politics and governance.

A lot is said about “us” in populist discourse, in appeals to patrimonial vainglory of the nation, in nostalgia for times that never existed. This “us” is most convenient when the attraction to dividing the public is strongest. We are good people, versus those who don’t have morals. We are honest workers, versus those who already have everything and wouldn’t know a proper day’s work if it slapped them in the face. We have common sense, we understand the world around us like it is, versus those who spend all day in a laboratory researching things. We are civilized, versus those buffoons on the other side. There’s a whole universe of generic examples of this “us” that simultaneously represents everyone and no one. This “us” is simplistic by default. The real us is complex, includes even the least estimable parts of our society, has defects, and always needs corrections in its system.

We’ve debuted the decadence.

Now we’re debuting Us.