By Frei Betto on February 14, 2025
photo: EFE
He who sows a lemon tree expects to harvest lemons. But in our society, driven by the analytical perspective and not by dialectics, facts are often examined for their effects and not for their causes.
The ideological system in which we live takes care to cover up the true causes. Hence, there are poor countries because their people are not enterprising; Muslims are potential terrorists; common prisoners are irredeemable; homosexuals are perverts; blacks are inept for scientific careers, etc.
Trump surprises many. Especially his allies. No one expected his first strike to be against the Panama Canal, with a view to harming China – a goal he achieved with the breakdown of the New Silk Road agreement – Mexico and Canada. If it had been against the Venezuelan government, no one would have been surprised.
Before, Trump had tripped up his most faithful allies — as he is now doing with European governments — by abandoning his aggressive rhetoric against North Korea and reaching out to Kim Jung-un.
Is Trump crazy? Will he set the world on fire, like Hitler did in Europe and Nero in Rome? Not at all. Crazy people throw money around and Trump knows how to multiply it. He is a genuine product of a system whose primary value is competitiveness and not solidarity. And he is building his administration to consolidate the most cherished “values” of those who worship money: the supremacy of whites; the strengthening of the privileges of the rich; the elimination of social rights, such as healthcare; the license for the CIA to kidnap suspects anywhere on the planet, to torture and to maintain clandestine prisons, etc. It now deports immigrants to the Guantánamo naval base in Cuba. It carries out a policy of ethnic cleansing in the United States similar to that proposed in Gaza.
If those who plant a lemon tree reap the lemons, those who plant the perverse idea that being rich is a natural right in a mostly poor world (the wealth of 1% of the world’s population exceeds that of 99%) legitimize inequality and violence.
The propaganda is overwhelming. Tyrannical, as Hannah Arendt called it, it instills in us the idea that only the rich are happy, because they have access to the luxurious and elegant market of superfluous goods. Or do we often see television extolling those who share their goods or defend the rights of blacks and homosexuals?
The system has no interest in people, except as potential consumers. What matters is profit and the accumulation of wealth. If a country is poor, it is the result of its lack of culture and creativity. The real causes are swept under the carpet: centuries of colonialism, of tyranny at the service of the metropolitan countries, of extortion of natural resources and exploitation of labor.
One example is Brazil, where the Portuguese did everything they could to prevent the emergence of a nation of literate people. The first printing press arrived in 1808 under King John VI, more than three centuries after colonization began. And the first university was inaugurated in 1913.
Trump is an emperor who believes he is clad in golden hair. His country violates the sovereignty of countless nations with impunity through its companies and military bases. How many foreign military bases are there in the United States? The dollar is the international monetary standard. If the United States coughs, the world economy sneezes.
The good thing about Trump is that he now exhibits the sharp claws of Uncle Sam, who no longer bothers to hide his true nature behind the façade of a kindly old man. Clark Kent finally sheds his good-guy image. Those who believed in the humanization of capitalism may be convinced that filing down the teeth and claws of the tiger does not eliminate its natural ferocity.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English