The rise of authoritarian populism is not merely a constitutional emergency or a moral aberration: it is the empirical symptom of a metaphysical decay. When truth itself becomes partisan, when the good is reduced to preference, and when beauty is debased to spectacle, a civilization has already begun to lose the conditions of its intelligibility. The argument proceeds from a simple yet profound claim: that the human world derives meaning only through participation in universality—the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. When that participation collapses, so too does the moral and epistemic fabric of society.

Donald Trump serves here not as an isolated political figure but as a sign, almost an allegory, of this decline. His ascendancy reveals how far America has drifted from its founding premise, a kind of metaphysical wager: that every human being has inherent dignity, that each person possesses a worth beyond price, and that law can embody universality. To describe Trump as a threat to this idea is true but incomplete; he is also its mirror. He exposes how thoroughly the liberal project has hollowed itself out. It is no accident that so many millions support him, for they too have lost faith in the idea of America. The tragedy is not merely that he exists but that we have embraced the symbol of our disease as if it were the cure.

His movement’s essence is not ideological coherence but ressentiment—a revolt against the very concept of universality. The authoritarian personality, as Adorno observed, craves certainty and hierarchy precisely because it has lost the capacity for truth. When belief in the universal collapses, the will to power becomes the last remaining form of conviction. Trump thus functions as a symptom of a civilization in decay, no longer sustained by reason or moral law.

Epistemic collapse: The death of truth

To understand this decay, one must grasp what is meant by “epistemic collapse.” It is not merely the spread of misinformation but the abandonment of the concept of truth itself. In its place stands an impoverished relativism: the view that all utterances are merely perspectives determined by identity or interest. Once this stance becomes habitual, proof and argument lose meaning; persuasion becomes performance.

The ancient and modern philosophers alike—Plato, Spinoza, Kant—recognized that truth is universal: it transcends the speaker and the context of speech. This is why the so-called genetic fallacy, when applied to truth, is fatal. The origin of a statement, whether noble or ignoble, says nothing about its truth value. A proposition is true not because a priest, a king, or a president pronounces it, but because reason can demonstrate its validity.

Trumpism annihilates this distinction. For his followers, the utterance itself suffices as verification; the leader’s speech acts as revelation. The proof is the personality. By collapsing truth into origin, he revives the most primitive form of mythic authority—what the ancients would have........

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