Ten days later, Donald Trump’s victory seems the most obvious and peaceful of events. He swept away all the stories of the head-to-head, all the rhetoric of the challenge to the last vote. After a week and a half, and well before Trump regains full possession of the White House, the world already seems to be shaping and redesigning itself around the old tenant of the most important palace of power in the world. This can certainly be seen in the East, where, amidst everyone’s hypocrisies and unsaid statements, the end of the conflict in Ukraine is imagined to be advantageous for Putin’s Russia. However, it can also be seen in the heart of Europe, weakened by the internal political weaknesses of the most important countries – France and Germany above all – and even in that periphery of the empire which is our little Italy. The anti-judge arrows of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and future US “minister”, are raining down on the heads of our institutions, to which the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella must even respond, while we analyze the outcome of a vote in Emilia-Romagna. Romagna and Umbria certainly not decisive, and certainly poorly attended. In the meantime, however, something else also happened: the Constitutional Court intervened by declaring the law on differentiated autonomy, one of the (declared) cornerstones for the current government majority, partially unconstitutional. A small summary of the story seems in order. Giorgia Meloni and her southern-based nationalist party had agreed to support the law on differentiated autonomy, strongly supported by that part of the League that remained fond of the North, only to have in exchange, from the ally, full support for the premiership, desired instead by Meloni and his Brothers.

The Law on Autonomy

Then, along the way, Giorgia Meloni realized that both laws, described as fundamental until a few months ago, would have been fundamental above all for the opposition which – divided on everything – would have found themselves incredibly united in their opposition to these measures. Thus, Meloni, who had said that she was not making a living because she wanted to change Italy, explained to her brothers that we would talk about the premiership later, in a future yet to be discovered, but not so close. And in the meantime, just a few days ago, the Constitutional Court explained that the law on autonomy is unconstitutional in seven different key points. The Northern League supporters say that the principle has been respected. The opponents of the League and of the law say that it is “the coup de grace”, but that law would in all likelihood never have been fully applied, given the institutional and technical complexities that still had to be addressed in order to achieve full implementation. Be that as it may, as far as we understand today, the Constitutional Court has dissatisfied both the members of the Northern League, because it has further complicated the path to autonomy, and the Democratic Party, because there is a good chance that the constitutional ruling will make it impossible, or in any case much less stimulating was the repeal referendum, which had been imagined as a great opportunity for political action.

The urban enclaves

The only one who doesn’t seem dissatisfied, if you think about it, is Giorgia Meloni, who cuts the nails in one fell swoop to an ally who is always over the top, and to adversaries who aren’t actually threatening, but who are nice to see reduced – from time to time – in their, albeit rare, displays of ingenuity. And therefore, having reasonably archived the autonomy dear to the League at the hands of the Consulta, and mothballed for tactical reasons the reform of the premiership which is crucial for the prime minister, the majority seems deprived of the much vaunted constituent aims. However, in this way, even the oppositions are deprived of strong points of reference and, barring at the moment unforeseeable breakdowns of the majority pact, the legislature will try to get by between symbolic choices on civil rights and stop-gap maneuvers on public finances. Meanwhile, in the world, we will really see the effect of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House come to fruition. We will see what will really happen, concretely, over time. What has already happened in the American liberal intelligentsia, and in the global one, is the consolidation of a mood and an awareness: of being a minority closed in their own, increasingly narrow, urban *enclaves*.

The dialect of liberals

Janan Ganesh, in the Financial Times a few days ago, clearly expressed the feeling of those who speak a language other than the majority one in the world. With acumen and self-irony he even calls it the “dialect” of liberals, an idiom for those initiated into the mysteries of superiority, incapable of understanding that the world out there may be ugly and bad, but it is different from those who live in a bubble of privilege and continues to call them merits and rights. It is a precise, perhaps even belated, examination. If Trump’s victory and its consequences were to serve to make this awareness shared among the liberal and progressive ruling classes, it would already be something.