François-Auguste Biard, L’Exorcisme de la folie de Charles VI, 1839
It is worth reflecting on a fact so incredible that attempts are made at all costs to sweep it under the carpet: the state that claims to be the most powerful in the world has for years been governed by men who are, technically speaking, insane. This is not simply a matter of taking a political judgement to an extreme: that Trump — as undoubtedly Biden before him — should be considered insane in the pathological sense of the term is a view already shared by many psychiatrists, and one that anyone observing the way they express themselves cannot help but share. It goes without saying that what interests us here is not the clinical case of the individuals known as Trump and Biden; rather, the question we cannot help but ask is: what is the historical significance of the fact that a country like the United States—which in a sense leads the whole of the West—is governed by a mentally ill person? What radical spiritual and moral—even before political—decadence could have led to such an extreme consequence? That the fate of the West was marked by nihilism is something Nietzsche had already diagnosed over a century ago alongside the death of God; but that nihilism would have to take the form of madness was not a foregone conclusion. Perhaps it is in some way out of compassion and mercy that God, who wishes to lose the West, leads it to its end not in consciousness and responsibility, but in unconsciousness and madness.
Giorgio Agamben: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad
It is worth reflecting on a fact so incredible that attempts are made at all costs to sweep it under the carpet: the state that claims to be the most powerful in the world has for years been governed by men who are, technically speaking, insane. This is not simply a matter of taking a political judgement to an extreme: that Trump — as undoubtedly Biden before him — should be considered insane in the pathological sense of the term is a view already shared by many psychiatrists, and one that anyone observing the way they express themselves cannot help but share. It goes without saying that what interests us here is not the clinical case of the individuals known as Trump and Biden; rather, the question we cannot help but ask is: what is the historical significance of the fact that a country like the United States—which in a sense leads the whole of the West—is governed by a mentally ill person? What radical spiritual and moral—even before political—decadence could have led to such an extreme consequence? That the fate of the West was marked by nihilism is something Nietzsche had already diagnosed over a century ago alongside the death of God; but that nihilism would have to take the form of madness was not a foregone conclusion. Perhaps it is in some way out of compassion and mercy that God, who wishes to lose the West, leads it to its end not in consciousness and responsibility, but in unconsciousness and madness.
Quodlibet, March 30, 2026