For many years — for decades — we lived inside a grand narrative that claimed the world, despite its contradictions, was slowly moving toward a more just, more humane, more law-governed order.
A narrative that said democracy, human rights, and international law were no longer just slogans, but had become the “rules of the game” governing relations between states — rules that restrain power and grant the weak a minimum level of protection.
What we are witnessing today is not a temporary crisis in that system, but its full exposure.
This article is not an attack on the West, nor a defense of the East, nor nostalgia for an old order, nor a justification of a new tyranny. It is an attempt to understand how the illusion collapsed, and how the global order shifted from one that claimed values to one that openly proclaims power — from moral hypocrisy to naked brutality.
The rise of Donald Trump was a revealing moment — not because he created this reality, but because he said it and acted it openly, without shame and without apology.
What came after Trump is even more dangerous: a world without reference points, without red lines, without comforting illusions.
In this article, I do not ask: Who is at fault?
I ask the harder question: What remains of the global order? And where is humanity heading?
Thank you, Trump
For you removed the veil from many eyes and minds — the eyes of naïve politicians who long believed in democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, defended them, and paid personal prices for their positions, assuming that the world, despite its stumbles, was moving in a broadly moral direction.
We knew — or pretended not to know — from British, French, and European colonialism in the Middle East, to China, to Africa, to the Americas and Australia: from direct occupation to economic colonialism, from control of energy and wealth through “modern” means, to erasing countries from maps, to exterminating entire peoples, to planting traitorous rulers in most of the world.
All of this was in front of us.
But we closed our eyes — sometimes out of good faith, sometimes out of naïveté, and sometimes — let us be honest — out of fear.
Until you arrived.
You did not beautify. You did not hide. You did not pretend.
You said out loud what they used to say in secret.
You did openly what they used to do in the shadows.
You were clear — in your cruelty, in your political vulgarity, in your bigotry, in your naked materialism, in your immorality, and in your pride in all of it.
Then came the peak: the kidnapping of a head of state, open talk of annexing and occupying other countries, the tearing up of everything the United States once claimed about free trade, the shameless cancellation of international agreements, and blatant racism inside America itself — deporting citizens, hunting others, arresting people simply on suspicion.
There was no more pretense.
There was no more mask.
I imagine — in fact, I am nearly certain — that the model of assassinating leaders and kidnapping presidents will be reproduced elsewhere, now that “the leader of the free world” has given the green light.
And I imagine that authoritarian rulers in the Global South will grow more brutal, more confident, and more free — as long as their role model, Mr. Trump, the new global thug, has granted permission.
Benjamin Netanyahu will undoubtedly remain your favored leader, because when crimes are committed in the name of power, they become policy — and when they are committed in the name of an ally, they become virtue.
I am, by nature, an optimist. But what I see today is dangerous and disturbing.
We are witnessing an explicit return to the law of the jungle: no law, no restraints, no governing values — not even moral hypocrisy to soften the ugliness.
So yes, thank you, Trump — not because you did the right thing, but because you exposed the lie completely, tore off the mask, and forced the world to see itself in the mirror without makeup.
International law was never truly just — but it claimed to be.
And that claim, however weak, was a restraint on power, a space for protest, and a minimum degree of order.
Today, that claim is over.
Violating the law is no longer the exception — it is the rule.
Sovereignty is no longer a principle — it is a temporary privilege granted and withdrawn by great powers.
The law has not been abolished — it has been emptied of meaning.
It is used when it serves the powerful, ignored when it restricts them, and reinterpreted when it exposes them.
Thus the world has shifted from a system where weapons were (at least formally) subject to law, to one where law is rewritten according to the balance of weapons.
The collapse of democracy
Democracy did not fall because it failed.
It fell because it was used without ethics.
It was transformed from a human value into a political weapon — raised against enemies and buried when it comes to allies.
Repressive regimes are tolerated, peoples are condemned, elections are celebrated here and demonized there.
The standard is no longer the will of the people, but the location of the state on the geopolitical map.
Thus democracy lost its meaning — for those oppressed in its name, for those defrauded in its name, and by those who created it and deceived us about its sustainability.
When the small tyrant sees that the big tyrant is not held accountable, his last traces of hesitation disappear.
Repression no longer needs rhetoric.
Arrest no longer needs justification.
Corruption no longer needs denial.
The deal is clear: loyalty in exchange for immunity, silence in exchange for survival — globally and locally.
Thus tyranny enters a new phase: tyranny without anxiety, without fear, without even hypocrisy.
The economy of the jungle: the end of “ethical globalization”
Globalization did not fall because it was unjust — but because it pretended to be ethical.
When free trade conflicted with the interests of the powerful, it collapsed instantly.
Sanctions are no longer political tools — they are weapons of mass starvation.
Markets are no longer open — they are fully politicized.
The economy is no longer a field of competition — it is a battlefield without visible blood.
Israel as the exposed model of the new order
Israel is no longer an exception within the global system — it has become its clearest model.
Occupation without apology.
Killing without accountability.
Turning the victim into the criminal and the criminal into the victim.
What used to be done with shame is now done with confidence.
What used to require justification now requires none.
When occupation becomes the model, some states are no longer exceptions — they are the system’s most honest expression.
Occupation without apology.
Killing without accountability.
We are not living in chaos.
We are living in a new order being formed — one without shared values, without binding law, without comforting illusions.
The question is no longer: Will the world return to what it was?
But rather: Can humanity build a more just system without lies?
This article offers no answer.
But it refuses to be complicit through silence.
A final word:
The danger is not in the fall of the illusion —
it is in becoming accustomed to ugliness after it has been exposed.
