Senility at the core, subversion at the periphery
Ranjan Solomon
QUESTIONS surrounding Donald Trump’s cognitive decline are no longer confined to partisan whispers or late-night satire. A growing number of American psychiatrists, psychologists, former aides, journalists, and even political insiders have raised concerns—sometimes cautiously, sometimes bluntly—about memory lapses, impulsivity, incoherence, repetition, and diminished restraint. These concerns surfaced after the election he lost and have only deepened with time.
Yet the striking fact is not Trump’s alleged senility. It is the extraordinary tolerance of it.
In any other part of the world—particularly in the Global South—such concerns would be swiftly weaponised. Mental fitness would be framed as a national security threat. Elections would be delegitimised. Sanctions would be justified. “International concern” would be theatrically invoked. In Trump’s case, however, cognitive decline is treated as a domestic inconvenience, managed quietly by institutions, lawyers, handlers, and carefully choreographed media appearances.
This contrast tells us something fundamental about power.
The American system does not unravel because a leader appears unstable. It absorbs instability when that leader remains institutionally containable. Trump is not protected because he is mentally fit; he is protected because the system believes it can discipline, surround, or neutralise him internally. Law here does not operate as a moral compass. It functions as a managerial instrument.
Now place this alongside Venezuela.
In Caracas, the approach is not diagnosis but subversion. Not public concern but covert inducement. Reports that US agencies have sought to buy off Nicolás Maduro’s most trusted security aides are neither surprising nor unprecedented. They belong to a long imperial playbook. When sanctions fail to break popular resilience and elections do not deliver the “right” outcome, the next move is to hollow out the state from within—turning guards into informants, loyalty into currency, survival into betrayal.
This difference matters deeply.
Trump’s alleged cognitive decline triggers no international alarm because he sits inside the imperial core. Maduro’s political survival—despite elections, institutions, and enduring popular support among the poor—becomes intolerable precisely because he sits outside it. The issue here is not democracy versus dictatorship. It is obedience versus defiance.
This is where the United Nations exposes the architecture of global double standards most clearly. The UN has neither the authority nor the appetite to demand a review of Trump’s arrest, trial, or mental fitness. It knows where power lies. It knows which confrontations would be futile or fatal to its own relevance. Yet the same institution—or its satellite mechanisms—routinely issues reports, statements, and “expressions of concern” about leaders in Africa, Latin America, or West Asia, often laying the groundwork for isolation, intervention, or regime change.
International law, in practice, is not universal. It is selectively activated.
What we are witnessing is not hypocrisy alone, but hierarchy. The law bends upward and strikes downward. Senility at the core is managed discreetly; resistance at the periphery is criminalised aggressively. Trump’s instability is treated as a family matter of empire. Maduro’s defiance is framed as a global threat.
Deeper Sadness
There is also a deeper sadness here—one that cannot be reduced to geopolitics alone.
Buying off trusted security aides is not merely a tactic; it is a sign of moral corrosion. It reveals an empire that no longer persuades but purchases, no longer convinces but corrodes. Loyalty becomes transactional. Ideology becomes irrelevant. Sovereignty becomes negotiable. This is not strength. It is late-stage power.
History is replete with such moments. Iran in 1953, Chile in 1973, Nicaragua in the 1980s, Iraq after 1991. When legitimacy fails, infiltration follows. When persuasion falters, betrayal is cultivated. The language changes – “democracy promotion,” “human rights,” “stability” – but the method remains constant.
Ironically, a parallel corrosion is visible within the United States itself. Trump’s endurance despite visible instability reflects an internal hollowing of democratic substance. Institutions function procedurally, but legitimacy thins. Law becomes spectacle. Trials become theatre. Elections become referenda on fear rather than hope. The electorate is transformed into polarised spectators rather than sovereign participants.
In this sense, Trump and Maduro are not opposites. They are mirrors held at different ends of empire. One is indulged because he belongs. The other is undermined because he resists.
And the UN, ever cautious, ever constrained, watches closely – issuing platitudes where safe, remaining silent where dangerous, and calling this posture “the international order.”
Coercion and Consent
Empires do not usually collapse because their leaders are senile. They collapse when coercion replaces consent, when loyalty must be bought rather than believed, when law is staged rather than trusted. What we are seeing today—from Washington to Caracas—is not the triumph of justice or democracy. It is the uneven management of decline.
Trump’s alleged senility is not the scandal. The scandal is that the system tolerates it at home while weaponizing far lesser transgressions abroad. Maduro’s survival is not the crime. The crime is that defiance itself has been declared illegitimate.
This is not a story about individuals. It is a story about who gets to fail safely and who is never allowed to resist.
And that, more than any diagnosis, is the real pathology of our time.
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Ranjan Solomon is a writer, researcher and activist based in Goa. He has worked in social movements since he was 19 years of age. The views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them. He can be contacted at ranjan.solomon@gmail.com
