It's not in my nature to delve into purely political issues, especially what we mean by politics today. I prefer to get to the heart of the problem rather than seek or focus on a palliative. And the central issue, in my view, is the human being and his desirable evolution.

What is happening in the United States seems interesting to me because, from what I think I understand, there seems to be an upheaval underway within the country: a different vision of what the state should be and represent for its citizens.

Of course, Donald Trump strikes me as more of an unreliable and capricious person than a conscientious, well-prepared, and capable statesman. But, as I always do, I try to look beyond first impressions and clichés to understand if there's anything interesting about his way of interpreting the role of president of the USA and the country he represents.

To better understand what's happening across the Atlantic, I turned to a dear friend of mine, Roberto Siconolfi, a sociologist, essayist, director of the YouTube channel "La Nuova Occidentale," analyst of social and political facts, and scholar of media, technological philosophy, and artificial intelligence.

I'd like to point out that Siconolfi gave the interview last April, but for editorial reasons, articles are only being published now and, therefore, don't take into account recent events. However, the intention isn't so much to report on the daily events unfolding in international politics—there are newspapers for that—but to interpret the direction in which Trump is taking the United States of America and, consequently, much of our world.

Danilo: before Trump's election, America was in a disastrous economic situation, to say the least, and its political and social system was also not in good health, to put it mildly.

For example, we often hear about the "Deep State," which appears to be Donald Trump's sworn enemy, dating back to his previous administration. I know that many use this term to refer to hidden apparatuses of the American state that act as a kind of invisible government, but I believe that, conspiracy theories aside, a Deep State truly exists, not only in the US, but also here in Italy and, likely, in many countries around the world.

More simply, it is the administrative-bureaucratic apparatus.

In many articles and interviews, I express my doubts about the possibility of changing a capitalist-consumerist society through politics. Despite the best intentions and good, wholesome, and altruistic intentions that might push someone to pursue a political career, I believe that doing so today is suicidal, because it is the bureaucratic apparatus that prevents you from pursuing your high ideals.

This is happening here as it is in the United States, and, if I understand correctly, it is precisely this decline in the democratic system that Trump wants to fight.

Roberto: the United States of America is a heterogeneous, complex nation and people, made up of various groups representing different social, economic, political, and even ideological and value backgrounds.

Donald Trump represents an America that has almost always remained hidden, especially in the last 30-40 years. A deep America, with the rural identity of the first American pioneers, more Texas than California, Central and South America, unwilling to project itself beyond its shores. So we could say, in Carl Schmitt's language, America is a land power, not a sea power, more inclined to industrial production, agriculture, community, and intermediary bodies, rather than an America with a strong mercantile vocation, based on traveling the world to do positive things, but also many negative ones.

This is a major difference from the idea of the US as a great nation projected beyond its borders. The Deep State you mentioned is based on this idea of America and was born precisely from a centralistic, centralizing, bureaucratic mentality, which is the antagonist of the America of communities, of the power of federal states, of territories, which does not want the state to interfere in its affairs, its family, or its community, and which embodies somewhat of that original secessionist spirit from the English motherland.

These two visions of the US and its role in the world are very different from each other, and Trump would appear to be much more in favor of an America that thinks first of its citizens and getting back on its feet financially, rather than looking outwards.

Of course, implementing an idea in a complex political system with a well-defined and clearly defined structure is never easy. It requires getting dirty, getting muddy, and making several attempts: some things are done well, others are not, and still others are given up.

As with tariffs, there is a lot of economic pressure, for example, from banks in Berlin, Tokyo, and Canada, custodians of a very large portion of the US public debt, which use the weapon of counter-tariffs and the "blackmail" of public debt that we Italians know very well.

Tariffs are a tool with which, ideally and even in a politically scaled-down operational capacity, as we have seen in recent days, the United States seeks a return to national economies, or rather, protectionist national economies, contrary to the gospel of globalization according to which all goods must circulate freely.

Which is never free, because, for example, in the European Union we're full of regulations. If anything, it's the big corporations that have the freedom to do what they want, but let's try starting a small company and see what happens.

Danilo: but the limitations we face within the European market are also qualitative; that is, we cannot import many things from other countries like the United States, for example, which has been trying to sell us their GMO products for years.

So, some of the limitations of the European Community are not financial or administrative, but qualitative.

You referred to interest groups, real lobbies (which in the USA are legal) that hold a great deal of power and that can influence the President's choices, and Trump is no exception.

So how much of what Trump is trying to do in recent months—and what he had anticipated in his electoral platform—has a chance of being realized, and how much is just a tentative approach, perhaps not just rhetoric, but simply an attempt to shed old ways of thinking, which ultimately proved ineffective? Because, as you also said, these powerful lobbies are already pressuring him to change his tune.

Roberto: I think we Western Europeans have forgotten what the real, concrete work of a true politician is, for the simple fact that in Western Europe, political power has decisively abdicated in favor of economic and financial power. Here, the ECB and the technical-scientific commissions are in charge.

Politicians here are merely paper-signers and paper-pushers; they have minimal room for maneuver. Let's remember what happened with the yellow-green government in Italy, where, to place a minister—who, incidentally, didn't strike me as a major subversive—Paolo Savona, all hell broke loose over a single minister!

In the US, on the other hand, we have a president who effectively has power, is elected by a significant portion of Americans, and can issue executive orders with a speed unimaginable to us. But his power is based on the concrete political action and the opposing powers; therefore, it is also a power tied to the ability to navigate all these lobbies and counter-lobbies.

Of course, he's also building his own group of loyalists, without whom it would be impossible for anyone to implement any change. The work of deforesting the Deep State, also carried out by the DOGE Ministry, is aimed at eliminating these large bureaucracies and organizations, but also at consolidating an alternative network, such as Palantir (Peter Thiel's company) and all the apparatuses of the so-called "techno-right," which is currently being studied.

In short, they are trying to build an alternative, an alternative deep state with different ideas, obviously with huge interests and profits, unavoidable components of politics as it stands today. This doesn't mean there will be a better or worse economic system; for now, the economic system is capitalism. The important thing is that it isn't merely speculative-financial capitalism and that it doesn't simply aim to delocalize and destroy domestic economies to go where labor is cheap. And this was perhaps the worst aspect of the Biden administration.

To be continued…