An image for the history books: the new US president signs stacks of presidential decrees in a baseball arena as if he were signing books and hurls the pens into the cheering crowd. The image is reminiscent of a carnival parade, where sweets are tossed to the eager spectators along the side of the road—except here, the fate of 11 million migrants and climate change is at stake. Play and seriousness, comedy and tragedy.
With each signature, a decision of the previous administration is reversed or, as in the case of more than 1,000 pardons, court rulings are overturned. As carnivalesque as the spectacle may seem, the consequences are serious. Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, persecution of immigrants: the flaw in today’s democracies—that those elected make decisions for the short time horizon of the election period—is taken to extremes here. Neither “before” nor “after” applies—only “Here I am.” The image of the jubilant, slightly awkward billionaire and his saluto romano during the post-inauguration speech is no less dystopian, especially considering that this is the same business leader who, with such visionary flair, cleverness, and courage, brought a digital payment system, reusable rocket launch vehicles, and electric cars to the world market. Reality and semblance are interwoven.
Pageants and Preachers
The clamor is complemented by softer sounds. There is 65-year-old Bishop Mariann Budde, who makes an appeal to the president’s conscience from the pulpit of the neo-baroque Washington Church. The mild, measured tone of her voice as she speaks about the imminent suffering of immigrants is a counterpoint to the pageantry and self-aggrandizement of the day.
A video posted afterward by democratic socialist Bernie Sanders offers another counterpoint. The politician and philanthropist does not waste time grandstanding or threatening but draws attention to what was not in the inaugural speeches: there was no mention of healthcare costs that are pushing families to the brink, rents in the cities that are unaffordable, and an absurd minimum wage of 7.25 dollars. It’s an impressive speech—I hope the 83-year-old will go on to help the 38-year-olds get to the forefront of political life.
Later, author and digitalization expert Sascha Lobo singles out a moment amidst the disturbing mixture of pretense and reality, of posturing and threatening, that should give us pause.1 We shouldn’t pay so much attention to the tech billionaire’s controversial salutation, he says, but we better take serious notice of the announcement that the US administration wants to invest 500 billion dollars in the development of artificial intelligence. Lobo puts the significance of this technology into a picture that gets under your skin: what electricity is to us today, artificial intelligence will be in a few years’ time. Just as electricity is part of all work processes and permeates all areas of life, from lighting to mobility to communication, and control over it guarantees power, it will soon be the same with artificial intelligence. What would it be like if all electricity came from the United States, Lobo asks, to underline the threat of dependency if one country dominates or even establishes a monopoly in this technology.
A Convertible Awakening
The interweaving of gambling and setting an agenda towards global coexistence made me think back to my own experience. Once, in my student days, I became completely infatuated with a red convertible and decided to buy it, even though it was well beyond my budget. After signing the purchase contract, I woke up in the night, my head cleared. The next day, I canceled the contract. Apparently, I had to take the wrong path and make it a fact in order to recognize the right one.
It might be that with “drill, baby, drill,” the short-sightedness and eccentricity in politics is being driven to an extreme—the only way to bring about a realization and a collective awakening. This idea was accompanied by a news item that same day: more than 250 billionaires and millionaires from around the world, backed by analyses from the Oxfam aid organization and others, had sent an open letter to world leaders at the World Economic Summit in Davos demanding higher taxes for the super-rich.2 Extreme wealth can buy political influence and is therefore a “threat to democracy,” according to the published document addressed to those gathered in Davos. Existing policies have led to the “worst inequality in 100 years.” One of the signatories is film producer Abigail Disney. She is a member of the Patriotic Millionaires, an association of wealthy non-partisan Americans who are calling for a socially just tax system and are campaigning to limit the influence of high finance on politics.
With 2025, we enter the second quarter of the 21st century. Like the four weeks in a month or the four quarters in an hour, each quarter of time has its own coloring, its own trials and potential. While the first quarter hour and the first week of the month still glow with the magic of the beginning, the second week, the second quarter, are about losing sight of the goal. Anyone who has been out in the mountains knows this: we only see the summit from the safety of the valley. Once we start climbing and are up on the slope, we can no longer see the summit. In the second week, the second quarter, we stumble, and it is only in the fumbling search, in the wandering and course-correcting, that a space opens up in which it becomes possible to collectively take the compass in our hands and set goals that we discover and achieve ourselves.
Translation Laura Liska
Image The new US president signs stacks of presidential decrees as if he were signing books. Source: AP pic
Footnotes
- Sascha Lobo in Spiegel.de: ‹Redet lieber über Stargate als über Musks rechten Arm› [Rather talk about Stargate than Musk’s right arm.]
- Quarz, “More than 250 billionaires and millionaires tell world leaders: Tax us”.
Bernie Sanders is not a philanthropist; he is a senator.