No society lives up to the principles and values it proclaims. But at least there was always minimal social pressure to maintain its validity. To bridge this gap between norm and reality, hypocrisy was resorted to, the pretense that, in fact, they are honored or fulfilled. The well-known quote by La Rochefoucauld that hypocrisy is “the homage that vice pays to virtue” comes to mean exactly that. And even Machiavelli himself advises the prince to be “a great simulator and dissimulator”, not to deviate excessively from the dominant values, to at least appear to comply with them. He was referring, of course, to those of Christianity, but those who support democracy are no less demanding. For this reason, it is almost impossible for us not to associate political life with a constant exercise of hypocrisy, which we tend to judge as a despicable vice.
Today, however, we have gone from denouncing hypocrisy to mourning its loss. Not in vain, as Judith Shklar says, it is one of the few vices that sustain democracy. As long as we continue to resort to it, it is because certain values remain valid. If we look around, however, we find that hypocrisy no longer seems necessary, and this only exposes our weak normative foundation. Trump is the most conspicuous example of this way of proceeding, with his undisguised sexism, racism or contempt for minorities. But also because of his disdain for the rules of democracy, such as when he said that he would not accept defeat in the presidential elections. Or by the message conveyed by his choice of future positions: Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth or the ineffable Robert Kennedy, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, appointed future Minister of Health. We are witnessing a radical transmutation of values.
Trump’s attack on woke upfollowed by so many other populist representatives, ultimately resulted in something similar to throwing the baby out with the dirty water. We may not like the specific way in which they tried to affirm their principles, so full of inquisitorial fervor, but these principles—antisexism, antiracism, for example—are the ourare an intrinsic part of our conception of justice. If any attempt to realize them, any aspiration for greater social or anti-discrimination justice, is branded as woke upthe field is clear to dynamite our universalist moral principles. Instead, the position of the sophist Thrasymachus, which Plato illustrates so well, now triumphs: justice is what suits the strongest, what he decides it to be.
Power—political, and above all economic—no longer needs to pretend, because it even enjoys the immense capacity to define whatever reality is through the subtle tools of post-truth, increasingly in the hands of the powerful. The very “moralization” of public life is also fakeis purely strategic, a cynical resource to denigrate the adversary rather than a sincere commitment to a certain order of values. In the world of geopolitics we have returned to the amoralism of the most stark reason of state; now it is also being inoculated into the central blood system of advanced democracies. Orphaned by shared principles of public ethics, only the language of power now reigns, whatever the clothing with which it is covered. But it is not a destination; It is in our hands to reverse this situation. It’s not a bad idea as a New Year’s resolution. May it be prosperous to you, dear reader.
