The adoption of two contradictory positions and the inability to get meaning due to the adoption of these two contradictory positions gives the definition of absurdity. In politics, however, absurdity is a useful tool that enables the politician who uses it (the absurd politician) to get the power of almost complete freedom of movement.
The demented politician may say whatever he wants one moment and at the next point in time to negate what he said just before or he can do what he wants without considering any institutional or moral constraints that imposes him his office.
In this way, the absurd politician can slippery like “eel” when he is faced with a serious impasse, to cancel the content of the policy and politics equally with his attitude and at the same time to encourage arbitrariness, adventurism and to trigger the wrath of his political friends and opponents respectively.
During the Trump’s presidency is verified an increasing ambiguous stance on President’s Trump publicly stated positions on specific issues that his stance resembles political absurdity by disappointing and confusing both his political opponents and friends respectively as well as the traditional US allies in NATO and the Pacific Ocean. More specifically, President Trump vaccination:
- “I deal with China in trade and I win,” and then admits that the Sino-American trade war can damage the US economy, while imposing tariffs on Chinese products by eliminating them one week later.
- In the case of Iran one minute it prepares to crush Iran and the next moment it offers to meet with the president of the country.
- In the case of North Korea, it constantly changes its view despite the growing challenges of Kim-Jong-un
- He withdraws the US troops from Northern Syria, allowing Turkey to invade Northern Syria and then announces that Turkey’s invasion of Northern Syria is a bad idea and if Turkey does something that it personally considers to be out of limits, it will completely destroy Turkey’s economy.
- He announces that he loves the Kurds-the five-year-old US allies in the war against the Islamic State-but refuses to support them because they did not help the US in the invasion of Normandy in WWII (forgetting that neither the Turks helped the US in the specific landing-invasion).
This type of President Trump’s political attitudes is not unprecedented since the planet has been accustomed to the same political behaviour by other authoritarian leaders around the world, e.g. Orban, Kim-Jong un, Erdogan, Putin, Duterte etc.
An attitude of political absurdity that wants the world and the institutions of a democracy to adjust each time in their own measures and standards and wants and not the vice versa which is the commonly accepted in all democracies.
The political absurdity is accompanied or motivated by authoritarianism and populism. The unfortunate thing currently is that the behaviour of leaders which is characterised by political absurdity tends to become a rule rather than an exception to the world political scene.
At the same time within this framework of extremism and demagogy formed by the political absurdity bloom all the “buds” of the national-populism, the far right and left respectively, racism and all types of supporters of conspiracy theories, by spreading through the internet and social media fake news with aim to create more and more victims of populism.
The systematic and systemic distortion of reality, the constant contradictions of political positions and the behaviour of political absurdity in general, undermine slowly and steadily the ability and capability of citizens to use rationalism as a tool of decisions in order to jointly achieve social progress and well-being.
