Isaac Nahon-Serfaty, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

An illness can be a grave moment for a political leader. It can be a time for discretion, or it can be a time for immense public exposure.

Winston Churchill, for example, preferred to keep his strokes secret in 1949, when he was head of the opposition, and in 1953 as British prime minister.

Others go for a bombastic manipulation of their ailments with the calculation of gaining momentum. With his COVID-19 infection, Donald Trump has chosen this option, as did the late president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, who died of cancer in 2012.

Both leaders represent two radical opposite ideologies. The conservative Trump is on the right of the political spectrum, while Chávez was on the far left. But the reality is much more nuanced than that.

Trump and Chávez express in their speeches and actions what I’ve defined as “grotesque transparency” — an excess of public disclosure that is so disruptive, it ends up dissolving the truth.

Read more: Dealing with the daily media dose of the grotesque

In this era of “ocular politics,” a leader’s physical appearance can become a focus of public attention. When the leader is no longer a physical representation of fitness and power, we often see two opposite attitudes from the media and the public. Either they want to confirm leaders are fit enough to fulfil their obligations as head of the government, or they want to prove that they’re the “fallen hero” who could not continue to carry the burden of the executive office.

Trump, as Chávez did when he was diagnosed with cancer, reacted to his COVID-19 infection by speeding up his return to the public stage and exaggerating — in action and rhetoric — his “total cure.”

The manipulation of magical thinking

Trump — again, just as Chávez did many times during his cancer ordeal — invoked supernatural intervention, calling his COVID-19 infection “a blessing from God that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise.” He had the opportunity to ostensibly prove the efficacy of an experimental drug, Regeneron, and proclaimed:

“I want everybody to be given the same treatment as your president, because I feel great. I feel, like, perfect.”

The main difference between the Trump and Chávez cases is how each man presented himself physically to the public after their diagnoses.

Trump pushed for a quick release from the hospital, staging a heroic return to the White House. He climbed steps to the White House energetically, although with some breathing difficulties, did a military salute and, some days after, greeted people gathered below from the balcony of the presidential residence (something reminiscent of leaders like Argentinian General Juan Domingo Perón, the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and Chávez himself).

Chávez, on the other hand — particularly during the advanced stages of his cancer — presented himself as the suffering leader overcoming pain and frailty to plead to God for both a miraculous cure and victory in his last political battle — the presidential election of 2012.

But both leaders staged grotesque performances, using their diseases for political gain.

Trump transformed his COVID-19 infection into a campaign gimmick, disregarding all public health considerations and dismissing the seriousness of the pandemic.

Chávez used his cancer as an opportunity to compare himself to a suffering Christ carrying the cross, as well as assuming the role of the preacher during a Catholic Mass celebration.

Both leaders were careful to create the impression of “transparency” by suggesting to their supporters that they were disclosing all the details of their ailments and how they were confronting them.

The grotesque aspect of these performances — the desecration of democratic and religious conventions — enhances among their followers the impression of authenticity that Trump and Chávez sought to create as part of their political branding.

The broader dangers of grotesque transparency

Grotesque transparency affects people’s political decision-making and behaviour. These kinds of deceptive performances and speeches can be used as a prescription for radicalization, degradation of public civility, decline of democratic institutions and rituals, and even the justification of violence.

That’s why we should care about the use and abuse of this form of political communication in an era of superficial debates on social networks, social polarization and a culture more focused on visual images — reducing everything to a beautiful or shocking image — than it is on detailed and substantive arguments.

Populist leaders who manipulate this mode of communication fuel the suspension of reason, inflame those who are blindly partisan and produce “mutilated and confused ideas,” as the Dutch 18th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza once said. Spinoza wrote in his treatise Ethics about “mutilated” ideas that cannot be articulated in a logical way, and are therefore “confused” because they tend to rely more on imagination than on reason — something both Trump and Chávez have used to their advantage.

Isaac Nahon-Serfaty, Associate Professor, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A Connecticut woman has been arrested for abandoning an 8-month-old baby she was babysitting in a dumpster after assaulting the infant’s 21-year-old mother, the police said.

According to WFSB, Andiana Griciel Velez, 24, has been charged with risk of injury to a child, second-degree assault and first-degree reckless endangerment. She is being held on a $500,000 bond and appeared in court on Tuesday.

The police said the abandoned baby was discovered in the dumpster by maintenance workers around an apartment complex in New Haven on Monday afternoon. Though some burn injuries were found on the girl’s hands, she was otherwise fine and alert.

“It’s scary, you know, thinking what type of person would do something like that. It’s hard to believe someone would do that,” one of the maintenance workers who discovered the baby told WFSB.

The officers said they eventually managed to get in touch with the child’s mother later on Monday and took the baby to the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital where she was in a stable condition.

“Basically coming out of shock, you can tell she was freezing, freezing in that trash can,” an eyewitness also said.

Though Velez is facing charges for throwing the baby in the dumpster, investigators are yet to determine who injured the infant. The New Haven Department of Children and Families is also concurrently investigating that.

Meanwhile, Velez’s court next date is set for October 30.

The wife of Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor said a White woman hurled racist slurs at her while she was out shopping for groceries on Sunday. Gisele Fetterman, who was born in Brazil and is married to Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, said the incident left her shaken and reminded her of those unsettling years she lived undocumented in the U.S. with her family.

“I was quickly a 9-year-old undocumented little girl scared of someone knocking at the door at that moment,” Fetterman told CBS Pittsburgh on Monday. “It absolutely brought back all the feelings of feeling that I didn’t belong or that I wasn’t welcomed here.”

Fetterman said the woman started attacking her inside the store in Braddock on Sunday evening. “She says, ‘There’s that ‘N word’ that Fetterman married,’ and said I was a thief and that I didn’t belong here and kept walking,” Fetterman told CBS Pittsburgh.

 

 

  TOP ARTICLES1/5READ MOREA brief history of Afro-Brazilian religions

 

 

“I got in my car and I began to back up, and I was crying and shaking at this point, and she comes out of the store with no groceries, just with her purse, and that’s when I was finally able to get my phone and that was kind of the end of it,” Fetterman said.

In a two-second video Fetterman posted on her Twitter account, the woman is seen verbally attacking her, saying, “You’re a n****r” through Fetterman’s car.

The incident comes as the U.S. is still battling racial injustice and police brutality amid protests following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans.

Fetterman, who fled Brazil to the U.S. with her family when she was young, has not been spared these racial slurs though they usually occur online.
Despite being left shocked over the woman’s racist attack, she was able to take a photograph of the woman’s license plate, which she has since given to her security detail.

Condemning the incident on Monday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said: “Racism and hate speech are always unacceptable, and unworthy of Pennsylvanians.”

“No Pennsylvanian should ever be made to feel unwelcome in our commonwealth because of their race or ethnicity. Gisele Fetterman spends much of her time devoted to making our state and world a better place and she — and every Pennsylvanian — deserves our respect, not the hatred too often displayed by people who seek only to further divide this country at a time when unity is so desperately needed,” he said in a statement.

Fetterman has, however, asked that the woman be met with compassion. The second lady believes that the woman was taught that kind of behavior.

“…If you know her or if she’s your neighbor or your family member, to try to find where this came from and try to work — the same way we learn something, we can unlearn it,” Fetterman said.

The wife of Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor said a White woman hurled racist slurs at her while she was out shopping for groceries on Sunday. Gisele Fetterman, who was born in Brazil and is married to Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, said the incident left her shaken and reminded her of those unsettling years she lived undocumented in the U.S. with her family.

“I was quickly a 9-year-old undocumented little girl scared of someone knocking at the door at that moment,” Fetterman told CBS Pittsburgh on Monday. “It absolutely brought back all the feelings of feeling that I didn’t belong or that I wasn’t welcomed here.”

Fetterman said the woman started attacking her inside the store in Braddock on Sunday evening. “She says, ‘There’s that ‘N word’ that Fetterman married,’ and said I was a thief and that I didn’t belong here and kept walking,” Fetterman told CBS Pittsburgh.

 

 

  TOP ARTICLES1/5READ MOREA brief history of Afro-Brazilian religions

 

 

“I got in my car and I began to back up, and I was crying and shaking at this point, and she comes out of the store with no groceries, just with her purse, and that’s when I was finally able to get my phone and that was kind of the end of it,” Fetterman said.

In a two-second video Fetterman posted on her Twitter account, the woman is seen verbally attacking her, saying, “You’re a n****r” through Fetterman’s car.

The incident comes as the U.S. is still battling racial injustice and police brutality amid protests following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans.

Fetterman, who fled Brazil to the U.S. with her family when she was young, has not been spared these racial slurs though they usually occur online.
Despite being left shocked over the woman’s racist attack, she was able to take a photograph of the woman’s license plate, which she has since given to her security detail.

Condemning the incident on Monday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said: “Racism and hate speech are always unacceptable, and unworthy of Pennsylvanians.”

“No Pennsylvanian should ever be made to feel unwelcome in our commonwealth because of their race or ethnicity. Gisele Fetterman spends much of her time devoted to making our state and world a better place and she — and every Pennsylvanian — deserves our respect, not the hatred too often displayed by people who seek only to further divide this country at a time when unity is so desperately needed,” he said in a statement.

Fetterman has, however, asked that the woman be met with compassion. The second lady believes that the woman was taught that kind of behavior.

“…If you know her or if she’s your neighbor or your family member, to try to find where this came from and try to work — the same way we learn something, we can unlearn it,” Fetterman said.