When German chancellor Friedrich Merz announces that in these hard and challenging times Germany must “learn the language of power,” two things are clear: this is not about phrasing political statements in different ways. The intended meaning becomes clear in the accusation leveled against the president of the enemy state currently at war, Russia: He only understands the “language of force,” and consequently, this is how he must be dealt with, rather than with the language of diplomacy. The “lesson” announced by the chancellor here is thus about how to position and assert his nation as a global actor capable of wielding force — both in its dealings with Russia and on the world stage in general. Secondly, it is also clear for the Federal Republic’s Commander-in-Chief that a policy involving threats and the use of military force is not, in fact, a new language that has to be learned from scratch; rather, it is a practice already honed over four years of conflict with the Russian adversary. Considerably more of this is required: this is what Merz wants Germany to learn.

“I’m voting for the president I’ll make more money under” (an unnamed hard-working American on German television)

That is pretty close to America’s true soul: to the false materialism going with the capitalist competition that the land of unlimited opportunities excels at. But it is not even half the truth when it comes to the second wave of Donald Trump’s election campaign for “America first!” after 2016. The officially launched ‘culture clash’ between populist lies and democratic hypocrisy is about nothing less than the nation’s morality — that is, about the obedience of the people that the global might of the state is based on in the land of the free.

In wartime, the morality of bourgeois society is turned upside down. What people must never do in peacetime — kill other people ---- they are now ordered to do. The right to life, one of the inalienable rights protected by basic law, now gives way to the duty to sacrifice one’s life for the state. This revaluation of values makes war the ultimate moral challenge. It provokes the need for justification, of all things.

There is war in Ukraine. So once again, we get to witness just how ruthless states can be when they see their self-preservation at stake. The warring powers leave no doubt that they alone decide when their existence is on the line and what that entails for their people. And yet, the same people, across the globe and especially in Europe, feel morally obligated to take sides.

Have they lost their minds?

Apparently, you can’t reveal it often enough. It doesn’t matter that the man has almost a full term behind him. Seasoned journalists still see the final verdict about Donald Trump as being that he is above all a man with no sense of decency. Three and a half years of America first!, his implementation of impressive visions and revisions of American world politics, of the ‘homeland,’ and of the most powerful office in the world — everything he does on and around the job is perceived solely as evidence of a defective moral sensibility.