"When an ordinary man says something absurd, we send him to a doctor. When a president does it, we call it a style."
https://youtube.com/shorts/4jXZCVN2u8o?si=BD5yLYxj-xAhpFUD
Picture a man claiming, straight-faced, that U.S. pilots brilliantly bombed an Iranian nuclear site “in the middle of the night… while it was dark,” that the place “no longer exists,” and that critics — CNN included — should apologize to the pilots.
No matter that no hard evidence is shown. No matter that modern aerial strikes are guided by GPS or lasers, and couldn’t care less whether it's dark or bright. No matter that assessing the effectiveness of a strike requires more than bombast from a campaigning ex-president. Were a random citizen to say such things, we might laugh. Or worry. But when a former President of the United States says them, they are dissected, commented, even admired. It becomes part of his “direct style”, his “trademark rhetoric”. Over time, the grotesque becomes expected. The absurd, normalized.
Yet this phenomenon is not new. In the 1960s, American psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a now-infamous experiment on obedience. He showed that ordinary people, placed under the perceived authority of a man in a lab coat, were willing to administer what they believed were lethal electric shocks to another person. Milgram’s chilling conclusion: perceived authority alone can short-circuit morality, logic, even basic reality.
What Milgram could not foresee was that one day, people would elect figures of authority who regularly spout nonsense — and that this would no longer shock anyone. The leader becomes a performer, not of truth, but of belonging. “He says what others won’t”, people claim. “At least he’s bold.” We no longer listen to understand the world, but to feel reassured by our team’s tone.
This is the White House Syndrome: when power no longer comes from competence or truth, but from sheer audacity. A cognitive version of authority without legitimacy, where words are judged not by their content, but by their volume.
One might shrug and say: “That’s America.” A land of MIT and QAnon, of NASA and televangelists. But history suggests otherwise: what takes root in the U.S. often crosses the Atlantic.
In France, warning signs are growing. When police raided the offices of far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, he shouted “I am the Republic!” — not metaphorically, but literally. As if his political identity placed him above the law. As if institutional legitimacy no longer belonged to institutions, but to those who scream loudest.
On the far right, Marine Le Pen regularly accuses judges of “attacking democracy” the moment she faces legal scrutiny. But judges are meant to judge. Opposition is not a coup. A court summons is not tyranny.
Trump, Mélenchon, Le Pen — for all their ideological differences, they share a dangerous deformation of democracy: a conflation of themselves with legitimate authority, and an allergic reaction to contradiction. A growing belief that institutional checks are illegitimate by default.
So the question is no longer whether Europe is immune. It’s whether we can still believe that absurdity, repeated enough, won’t eventually kill democracy.
When Absurdity Becomes Authority
“In the middle of the night… while it was dark… they destroyed the site.” These are the words of Donald Trump, President of the United States, referring to the confirmed bombing of Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility. Never mind that darkness has no relevance in modern guided airstrikes. What matters is the drama, the performance, the accusation against the press.
From an ordinary citizen, such a statement would seem delusional. From a president, it becomes political theater. The absurd is no longer shocking — it’s integrated.
In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram showed how perceived authority can override reason. Today, the threat is no longer obedience — it’s indifference.
Speeches are no longer judged for their truth, but for their tribal utility. The loudest voice wins. The most theatrical claim is believed. And we begin to elect those who perform power, not those who embody it.
This isn’t just about America. In Europe too, democratic norms are eroding. Power becomes personal. Posture replaces fact. Adjectives replace arguments.
The question is no longer: How far can this go? It’s: How long can democracy function without a shared sense of reality?
References
- Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, Harper & Row, 1974.
- George Orwell, 1984, Secker & Warburg, 1949.