In foreign policy, Donald J. Trump favors a transactional approach that favors intimidation rather than diplomacy. He acts like an arsonist in Ukrainian, Gazan and Taiwanese cases. For protectionist purposes, he announced that he wanted to break off commercial relations with his natural partners. He also holds an imperialist discourse worthy of the 19th century against Greenland, Panama and even Canada.
In terms of domestic policy, Trump plans to reduce federal spending dramatically and thus sabotage any capacity for action of the State to intervene in social matters. He allies himself with the libertarian elite (of which Elon Musk constitutes the supreme incarnation), he disguises the truth and makes people believe that progress necessarily requires all-out deregulation (particularly with regard to energy issues or artificial intelligence). ). Above all, his divisive discourse exacerbates racist, misogynistic and anti-institutional positions throughout the country and elsewhere in the world.
No doubt, the post-Trump world of 2029 (if he does not remain in power by force after this date) will be more unequal and more insecure. As for climate disruption, let us simply mention that recurring floods, or fires like Jasper 2024 or Los Angeles 2025, will be commonplace and will leave populations in even more disarray, given the expected disengagement of States and insurance companies. . The rights of minorities will have retreated. The traditional media will most likely no longer have the means they currently have to act as a counter-power. In short, January 2025 constitutes the start of Trump’s second term as president of the United States of America, but also the entry into an immense fog beyond which the world will have irreparably changed.
Such periods of decline and deviations are frequent in history. Humanity being capable of the best and the worst, all scenarios are on the table for the future of the world. After Trump, nothing guarantees a slow agony of the human species of course, but nor an automatic return to progress. On the other side of this dense fog, in the United States as elsewhere, civil society must be politically ready to formulate ambitious alternatives to the current world and shout loudly its “global refusal” of a system which condemns humanity in human rights.
Basically, the first quarter of the 21st century unfolded under the seal of immense setbacks of which Trump represents only the culmination, and this, in the name of a need to grow our economies at all costs. “To the global refusal we oppose full responsibility,” wrote the artist Paul-Émile Borduas in 1948 in reference to a French-Canadian society which had to extricate itself from traditionalism and embrace the challenges of modernity.
In a similar way, the responses to be formulated in our contemporary world will have to prove as radical and ambitious as the positions of Trump and his followers can be today. This presupposes a redefinition of the concept of progress to refuse to associate it with productivity, growth and destruction. Beyond 2029, it will be necessary to create strong civil societies with solid places of deliberation. Who will be able to bring together people from all political horizons. Who will be able to develop coherent political offers. But above all, who will be able to agree on certain basic principles of societies that want to last. On both the left and the right, it will be necessary to recognize that the road to the 22nd century must be carried out in compliance with at least two basic principles: an ambitious target for reducing socio-economic inequalities and recognition of the climate emergency.
-Far from being a period of dormancy for citizen engagement, 2025-2029 must represent this gestation period which will give birth, on the other side of the fog, to a more progressive world for the 2030 decade and beyond.
Daniel Landry
Professor of sociology
Laflèche College, Trois-Rivières
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