When Trump says the world’s ‘a little crazy right now’, you know it’s bad

The year of democracy, as 2024 has been designated, is ending on an epic and frenetic note. Events are moving at such a hurtling pace and history is coming at us so thick and fast that it feels reminiscent of my student days in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when professors would tear up the dog-eared lectures they had delivered unthinkingly for decades because they were so quickly becoming obsolete.

This month has witnessed a string of dramatic December surprises. In Syria, more than 50 years of homicidal rule by the Assad family has come to a lightning end. A 13-year civil war, which had largely slipped from the headlines, was completely upended in little more than a week as anti-government rebels first seized Aleppo, the country’s second city, then raced to capture the capital, Damascus.

Illustration by Dionne Gain

Bashar al-Assad is a murderous thug, who fled like a coward into the arms of Vladimir Putin, his long-time sponsor. But seductive though it is to see his fall as a triumph for freedom in the battle against an axis of authoritarians, the rebels primarily responsible for his downfall are from jihadist group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. History is rarely clear-cut.

South Korea last week witnessed a shock return to martial rule when President Yoon Suk Yeol mounted a short-lived power grab in which military helicopters circled above the National Assembly in Seoul and soldiers stormed through its gates. This economic and cultural powerhouse, known in recent times for its K-pop and Oscar-winning movie industry, harked back to the dark days of military dictatorship last seen at the start of the 1980s.

Events in France were not so explosive. Nonetheless, in the same week that Notre Dame reopened is renovated doors after the 2019 blaze, the French parliament came to resemble a dumpster fire. For the first time since 1962, parliamentarians passed a no-confidence vote, which has made Michel Barnier, an urbane Gaullist, the shortest-serving prime minister in the history of the Fifth Republic. His brief tenure brought to mind that pungent observation from Charles de Gaulle: “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?”

Over the weekend, as if to add an extra frisson, there was an American in Paris. The beleaguered French president Emmanuel Macron invited Donald Trump to attend the reopening ceremonies of Notre Dame. “It certainly seems like the world is a little crazy right now,” said Trump, seemingly oblivious to how he has contributed to the craziness.

President-elect Donald Trump is greeted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Saturday.Credit: AP

In Washington, Joe Biden, in a dubious use of his presidential pardon power, granted clemency to his son, Hunter. On Capitol Hill, Republicans mulled whether to entrust the Pentagon, America’s most mighty ministry, to Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host nominated by Trump to be defence secretary who faces accusations of sexual misconduct and excessive drinking. Neither episode showed America, which still likes to think of itself as the beacon of democracy, in a glowing light.

New York, meanwhile, felt more like Gotham. The murder of the United Healthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, who was gunned down in midtown Manhattan, has made a folk hero of his killer, whose bullets were inscribed with the words “delay” and “depose”. This evoked phraseology used in the health insurance industry, “delay, deny, defend”, which have become bywords for corporate greed and the financial ruin of patients unable to pay exorbitant bills. The alleged assassin is being feted as a modern-day Robin Hood. The coat he wore has become an instant bestseller.

From a geopolitical viewpoint, what makes these events more meaningful and portentous is their interconnectedness. Assad fell largely because his sponsors had been weakened by major conflicts elsewhere: Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Hezbollah in south Lebanon, and Iran in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen.

The chaos in South Korea has shades of Trumpian democratic norm-busting, and echoes of the aftermath of January 6. Like Trump’s Republican Party, Yoon’s People Power Party has not sought the impeachment of the president, and boycotted the vote held on Saturday night to force the president from office. Yoon himself – who was previously best known internationally for singing American Pie at a 2023 state dinner with Joe Biden – had portrayed himself as a victim of a political witch-hunt after his wife, First Lady Kim Keon-Hee, faced accusations of stock manipulation and receiving a luxury Christian Dior handbag.

In France, Michel Barnier lost his prime ministership because the snap elections called in June by Macron to fend off the French far right, after its success in the European parliament elections, produced such a divided National Assembly in Paris. Elections that Macron hoped might serve as a safety valve only added to the gridlock. And just as paralysis in Washington helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump, paralysis in Paris could boost the far-right Marine Le Pen.

As for the murder of a healthcare executive, and the valorisation of his alleged murderer, it reminds us of why Trump survived his insurrectionary role on January 6, 2021. So intense is the rage against the corporate and governing status quo that many Americans are willing to countenance – or at least forgive – violent remedies. Eerily, the Manhattan murder brings to mind Trump’s famous 2016 maxim that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing any voters.

The war in the Middle East. The battle for Ukraine. The departure of Bashar al-Assad. The restoration of Donald Trump. The ground is shifting everywhere. Nothing is fixed and certain. Perhaps we should rethink the designation of 2024 as the year of democracy. Maybe we should think of it as the year of everything, everywhere, all at once.

Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is the author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself.