THE MONARCH OF THE VOID

In history, some figures emerge to fill a gap; others arise because the gap has become an abyss. Donald Trump did not construct the contemporary void: he is its accidental sovereign, an improvised heir. He understood, before his peers, that there was no longer a state to govern, but only grievances to channel and a lack of meaning to embody. Where his predecessors strove to feign a vision, he was content to hold up a mirror. And this mirror, held before a society exhausted by its own pretenses, did not reveal a fallen glory, but a profound hollow.

It is a fundamental mistake to reduce the man to a mere caricature: the buffoon, the deviant, the vulgar. While such a reading may comfort the ego of his detractors, it stems from intellectual laziness. It assumes that a healthy system is being plagued by a sick individual. Yet, a vigorous social body does not generate such outgrowths—or if it does, it expels them swiftly. Trump, however, was not rejected by the organism. He was carried to the summit, protected, and then nearly sanctified by a massive portion of the population. This reality alone is enough to sweep away the idea of a simple historical accident.

By the very logic of the institutions he led, Trump should have been sidelined or even incarcerated. Not for a single mistake, but for a cumulative layering of transgressions that any ordinary citizen would have paid for dearly. Fraud, perjury, institutional pressure, the uninhibited use of verbal violence... Taken separately, these acts can be negotiated. Taken together, they reveal a framework: that of systemic impunity.

A skeptic might point out that justice has attempted to do its job—that there were trials and convictions. This is a procedural truth, but a symbolic misreading. Judicial authority does not rest solely on legal codes, but on a collective reverence for the rule of law. By transforming every hearing into a spectacle and every verdict into martyrdom, Trump neutralized the institution. When an individual manages to turn the sword of justice against itself, the law ceases to be a check on power and becomes a mere stage prop.

This is where the reign of the void truly establishes itself. A void of law as a moral compass, a void of truth as a common foundation, and a void of personal responsibility. Trump does not create these absences; he inhabits them. He builds nothing; he occupies the devastated terrain of a society that has come to prefer performance over coherence, and tribal belonging over the verification of facts.

Lacking a classic ideology, he fits perfectly into this absence of landmarks. A doctrine imposes constraints, a framework, and sometimes sacrifice. Trump, however, sacrifices nothing. He serves only his own reflection. This total lack of transcendence makes him, paradoxically, intensely contemporary: he is the man without a cause in an era that no longer has any, the hollow word in a world saturated with noise.

Analysts who look for a hidden strategy or a sophisticated political intelligence behind his actions are mistaken. Trump is not a grandmaster on a chessboard; he is a predator of instinct. He scents flaws and humiliations and plunges into them. His talent—if we dare use the word—lies in the brutal understanding that modern politics is no longer a debate of ideas, but the management of rage. He does not sell a future; he offers symbolic revenge against convenient targets: judges, the media, experts, and "the others."

One might object that demagogues have always existed. This is undeniable. But he emerges in a context of technological and cognitive rupture where the hierarchy of facts has collapsed. In the past, even a liar had to respect the outlines of reality to better distort them. Trump, however, breaks free from them. He does not lie to conceal; he lies to demonstrate that truth no longer holds power. Once this premise is accepted, we shift into a post-rational era where the strength of the narrative crushes the evidence.

The danger is not so much what he imposes, but what he authorizes. He validates brutality as a language, transgression as a sign of political virility, and ignorance as a posture of courage. What he releases is not a school of thought, but a general permission to let go of ethical standards.

The paradox is biting: Trump claims to be the "strongman," but he is the symptom of an immense civilizational weakness. He was not born in a nation confident in its values, but in an exhausted world where institutions stammer a language that no longer resonates. He is not the destroyer of liberal democracy; he is its unwanted offspring.

On the global stage, this logic of absence takes on another dimension. Trump does not shake the international order through an alternative geopolitical vision, but through a systematic dismantling of trust. Treaties and alliances become transactional variables. A state's word no longer counts as a commitment; it becomes a revocable option. This is more than a change in tone; it is an ontological shift: the world leaves the reign of law to return to an arena of raw force.

Some see this as a healthy "realism." This is a misunderstanding. True realism requires a vision of long-term balances. Trump, instead, reacts to impulse. He confuses power with noise, and diplomacy with the public humiliation of his counterpart. It is the mark of a mind that does not seek stability, but immediate impact.

Most disturbing remains what he reveals about his followers. He asks of them no effort, no discipline, and no rigor. He offers them a negative identity: existing through rejection and contempt. In a society where the common project has frayed, this offer is magnetic. People no longer gather around an ideal, but around a shared hatred.

One might hope that this dynamic would lose momentum—that this reign of the void would collapse under its own weight. This would be to ignore the depth of the root. The void is no longer a temporary anomaly; it has become our natural habitat. Institutions churn in a vacuum; speeches pile up without substance. Trump is the king of this derelict space because he is, in essence, pure surface.

Therefore, the question of his place in prison becomes almost anecdotal. It still assumes that the law is the pivot of history. Yet, the rot is deeper: it is the ability of a man to multiply outrages without triggering a collective moral awakening. What is staggering is not the lack of convictions, but the evaporation of shame.

Even though Trump divides, he does not need unanimity. He only needs a base that accepts symbolic violence as a substitute for legitimacy. In this setting, a criminal sanction is no longer a judicial truth, but just another narrative element, malleable at will.

Like all historical figures, Trump will eventually fade away. But the void he embodies will persist until it is filled by something other than impotent nostalgia or soulless technocracy. You do not win against absence with moral lectures, but by rebuilding a credible narrative and a standard that goes beyond mere disgust for one individual.

The true peril is not the man himself, but the idea that his passage is perceived as an inevitable stage. The danger is that we continue to produce sovereigns of the void, carried by peoples who have given up on defining what they truly expect from power.

For where the rule recedes, force takes over. Where truth dissolves, lies become king. And where meaning dies out, any loud shout can be mistaken for a direction.

Trump is not the answer to our ills. He is the evidence that we have stopped asking the right questions.

JLP