Two powerful men who used humiliation as a political tool are in trouble. That they despised the latent humanity in people they treated like things. Both Donald Trump – prosecuted – and Silvio Berlusconi – who suffers from a serious illness – are embarking on dark journeys, now in the hands of a chain of small human gestures, the only ones capable of comforting them.
I think of the sick man's gown - that green cellulose that equals us all -, once stripped of its rings and chains, with sad gaiters instead of the good leather that ennobles the feet. And I remember those words of Lagerfeld, the last he uttered according to his confidante, Sébastien Jondeau, who watched over him at the elitist American Hospital in Paris: "It's stupid to have three Rolls and end up in a rotten room like this". I can't imagine il Cavaliere expressing such lucid sarcasm.
How must the cascades of impotence fall on those who not only had everything, but used the power that was given to them by the polls to defile the world with more falsehood, corruption and violence? Trump, who has always looked down on women, has ended up riding both his misogyny and multiple falsehoods.
He exposed both in the Access Hollywood tape: he was able to separate migrant mothers and daughters at the border, while laughing at the multiple accusations of sexual abuse that, until now, he had successfully trumped. "You know, it doesn't matter what the media writes as long as you have a young and beautiful behind by your side", he allowed himself to be said.
His style, like that of the veteran Italian politician and businessman, has been steeped in abusive and sexist rudeness. The one which, in the end, is first of all a disregard for oneself, since vexing others with pleasure makes us as vile as dirtbags. They are statesmen.
After multiple run-ins with the law - for corruption or child abuse - until his neo-fascist antics led to an institutional crisis from which Italy has not yet fully recovered, the mark left by Berlusconi is that of a jester
In the case of Trump, it is difficult to stop his nonsense, topped off by the coup attempt staged in the Capitol. Now, the circle of sordidness closes because, not only he sits in the dock for his 34 charges for serious crimes, but all Trumpism itself. A populism built on the basis of fake news, fevered tweets, intolerance and insults and the logic of extreme narcissistic behavior has created schools all over the world.
In a 1996 essay now republished by Arcàdia and Paidós, The Decent Society, the thinker Avishai Margalit delves into what he calls the paradox of humiliation: feeling humiliated is not rational. And that's why he turns to the distinction made by Bernard Williams between red emotions (those that cause us to blush) and white emotions (those that make us pale). "Humiliation is a red emotion, but the victim assumes a response that fits with a white emotion", says Margalit, for whom the concept of a decent society is based on sensitivity, while insult always represents a social evil.
Crossing all the red lines of respect and exhibiting a vast catalog of humiliations, Donald Trump showed a leadership based on indecency, an attempt against human dignity. At last it can be washed away by justice, without the need for stain removers.
