John F. Kennedy on Trump Farewell to America
The USA is dividing the world into hegemonic spheres of influence and thereby belittling itself. Are we still breathing the same air?
When you have to say goodbye to them, things and people, and even ideas, sometimes shine brightly once again. What a beautiful idea it was when, no matter how deficient the actual implementation always was, you could believe that humanity, as John F. Kennedy once put it, lives together on this "small planet".
The hopeful tremolo in the US President's voice resonates once again: "We all breathe the same air. We all care about the future of our children. And we are all mortal."
That was America too. E pluribus unum. Of course there was kitsch in it too. But it also had a clear goal: the sensible organization of the world inhabited by all humanity. Over. In a world divided into spheres of influence by hegemonic powers, we will no longer breathe the same air.
It is becoming increasingly clear that this is what the Trump-Vance-Musk era is leading to: the USA, Russia and China as imperial powers that leave each other alone . And Europe is doomed to become either its own sphere of influence or a plaything (after all, as a European you have the undeserved privilege of being born in a rich and liberal region).
When the world was divided in two after the Second World War, it was different. There were two social models in the West and East, each representing all of humanity. Now, in the new division of the world, it is cynically about power and isolation. I'll give you the Uighurs and Crimea if I can have Greenland in return. The fact that America is playing this game is actually difficult to accept. It is also making itself small in the process.
Return care packages?
It will be very strange to deal with this new America. Culturally and intellectually, the USA and Europe are far too closely connected - historically, philosophically, through Hollywood, Disney, hip hop, who knows what else - to suddenly be able to move to an equidistance from the three hegemonic powers.
Oh, America, one almost wants to send the former ideals back across the Atlantic in care packages. Can one hope that the USA will remember them again at some point?
