DN Debate. "President Trump is actually acting completely rationally"
DN DEBATE.
The world will not return to normal when Donald Trump leaves the White House. “Normal” does not exist anymore. Nor is Trump the all-powerful creator of our new world order. When we criticize his actions, we are not just fighting against the president, but against the entire childish logic of the modern world, writes Søren Schultz Hansen, visiting researcher at the University of Southern Denmark.
American President Donald Trump has, since he was first elected in 2016, been the most powerful man in the world.
He is also the most criticized man, and is seen by many as a strange and unusual phenomenon: unpredictable, unstable, spontaneous and ill-considered. These are worrying characteristics for the leaders of the Western, democratic world.
The most worrying thing, however, is that Trump's actions are not exactly strange or unusual. For the world in 2026 is also unpredictable and changeable: Just think of the climate crisis, Covid-19, war in Europe, the closure (and opening?) of the Strait of Hormuz and skyrocketing energy prices. And then we have Donald Trump himself, who often has a hand in the game and has almost become the symbol of an unstable world.
Trump is criticized for being like a child when he always follows his first impulse, demands to get his way and expects to get everything he points to – whether it’s Greenland, the Nobel Peace Prize or Venezuela’s oil. The outside world criticizes the leader of the world’s largest economy when he hands out stupid fines in the form of tariffs left and right, or goes to war without either long deliberation before or reflection afterwards. This makes many look forward to the end of his second presidential term.
It is a world without the rule-based order created by the old, grown-up, sensible people and the Western nations.
But we are not in a temporary state of emergency, where the world will return to normal when Donald Trump leaves the White House. He is a symptom rather than a diagnosis of a new world dynamic. It challenges the rules and forms that have applied for a hundred years – how we have organized ourselves, thought and acted. It is a world without the rules-based order created by the old, grown-up and sensible people and the Western nations. We are looking towards a new, rule-free world order.
The criticism of Trump and his behavior ignores the fact that he is powerful because of his behavior and personality – not in spite of them. In fact, he is the one acting rationally according to the logic of the modern world.
Because the world has become childish.
We live in a world that increasingly rewards the fast and the immediate, while loyalty and long-term, persistent work no longer pay off as well. Here, the battle for attention is fierce, and the winner is increasingly the one who reacts fastest and shouts loudest. Here, reality is changeable and unpredictable, making it increasingly difficult to find a stable and deeper meaning.
We live in a world that increasingly rewards the quick and immediate, while loyalty and long-term, persistent work no longer pay off as well.
The characteristics of the modern world have already been described in the literature. The British sociologist and political strategist Anthony Giddens, for example, emphasized that the central characteristic of modernity was not the content of the changes, but their speed and scope. The Polish philosopher and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, in his major work “Liquid Modernity,” even speaks of the dynamics of the modern world as being like a liquid, constantly in motion and never at rest.
In the first quarter of the 21st century, uncertainty is no longer the exception, but a permanent condition and a fundamental prerequisite for society, organizations and the individual, as Giddens and Bauman point out. We live in a high-speed society where there are more opportunities, more to catch up on and achieve – but still only 24 hours in a day. The goals and horizons that we could previously count on and orient ourselves by are collapsing. This is how the star German sociologist Hartmut Rosa describes what he calls the acceleration society.
Where are we going? Photo: Magnus Hallgren
In such a society, the notion that all good things come to those who wait no longer applies. On the contrary: all good things disappear for those who wait.
In Trump's world of constant and exponential change, instant gratification is actually rational. Here, Trump's impatient and confirmation-seeking behavior becomes understandable, sensible, and meaningful. If you don't get the reward right away, there's too great a risk that you won't get it at all. The networked, digital world simply has a childish logic. And Trump's short-term and immediate reactions fit well into this logic.
It gives his many quick, impulsive and ill-considered actions and statements greater justification, however frightening it may sound. And one cannot help but feel a certain anxiety if it is Donald Trump who has the longer line, and the rest of us who must learn from him to better live in a childish world.
Trump is simply a mirror of the modern world
The disappointing conclusion based on both the theoretical descriptions and what we can immediately see with our own eyes is thus the following: It is Trump who is the new normal in 2026. It is he who behaves rationally and sensibly. Trump is simply a mirror of the modern world and of some new conditions for our democracy: the constant change, the deal with deepening and truth as relevant parameters, the rationality of acting in the short term and based on immediate needs. As well as on social media's new ways of creating proximity and authenticity - or staging and even "fake news". These conditions will persist, regardless of whether Trump is president or not.
When we criticize Donald Trump and his way of acting, we are not just fighting against the stupid but world-changing whims of the current American president.
We are fighting against the very dynamics and childish logic of the modern world.
Read more articles from DN Debatt:
Senior Professor Claes Sandgren: "If US democracy collapses - what does Europe do then?"
Two North American experts: "Trump is rolling back the tape to the Jim Crow era"
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