Whom God Wishes to Destroy, He First Drives Mad | Giorgio Agamben

It is worth reflecting upon a fact so incredible that we attempt to repress it at all costs: namely, that the state which claims to be the most powerful in the world has been governed for years by men who are technically demented. This is not to give an extreme form to a political judgment. That Trump—like Biden before him—must be considered demented in the pathological sense of the term is an evident fact now shared by many psychiatrists, and one that anyone observing his mode of expression cannot fail to endorse.

Quem Deus vult perdere dementat.

It goes without saying that what interests us here is not the clinical case of the individuals named Trump and Biden; rather, the question we cannot fail to ask ourselves is: what is the historical significance of the fact that a country like the United States—which stands in some way at the helm of the entire West—is governed by a mentally ill person? What radical spiritual and moral decline, even before a political one, could have led to such an extreme consequence?

That the destiny of the West was marked by nihilism is something Nietzsche had already diagnosed more than a century ago, alongside the death of God. Yet, it was by no means a given that nihilism would take the form of dementia. Perhaps it is out of some measure of compassion and mercy that the God who wishes to destroy the West leads it to its end not through awareness and accountability, but through oblivion and madness.

Giorgio Agamben, March 30, 2026.

The Curse of Awareness | Russell Geoffrey Banks

The truest words were from Nietzsche, when he said that any man who knows too much, he can't fit in anywhere. And that's the curse of awareness. Once you start to delve underneath the surface, that's when you realize the whole world is not so simple. And you start to see people for who they really are—and their games they're playing, and that fake confidence, all the ulterior motives. And you realize this whole society is built on lies. And people, they're sheep. And once you see that, you can't unsee that.

 

 » What hath happened unto me? How have I freed myself from loathing? Who hath rejuvenated
mine eye? How have I flown to the height where no rabble any longer sit at the wells? «

Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

 

So you try and try to tell people. But they say to you, 'Oh no, no, you're overreacting, you’re crazy.' So, you stop talking. But you're still observing, you're still watching. But you know you don't belong anymore. And it's not because you think you’re too good for anyone. No, no, it's because you've seen too much, you're watching everything, and now you know you can’t go back to how it was anymore. An awareness that isolates you. And it's the price of clarity. Because the crowd says, 'move away.' But then, at least, you know who you are.

Eternal Recurrence of the Same | Friedrich Nietzsche

» I am all the names in history. «

» What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh … must return to you — all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. 

The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again — and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine!’ If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? «

Aphorism § 341 - Die fröhliche Wissenschaft

Friedrich W. Nietzsche

1882