Language testifies to the crisis of trust between politics and society

2026-07-04 08:56:00, Opinione Ardi Stefa

Machiavelli wrote in “The Prince” that it is safer to be feared than loved. But even he set a limit: the ruler should not become hated. History has shown that many princes learned only the first part of the advice and forgot the second. The conclusion was always the same.

Even Caligula didn't become a symbol of madness because he appointed a horse as senator. He became a symbol because he believed he could mock the reason of citizens without limit and that no one would hold him accountable.

It is said that even Nero played the lyre while Rome burned.

From Louis XVI to Ceausescu, from royal courts to the dictatorships of our time, the fall did not begin the day the people took to the streets. It began the day those in power stopped listening to what was said outside the walls of the palaces of power.

In recent weeks, the language of politics has become a mixture of arrogance, contempt, labeling and intimidation. The opponent is not opposed, not listened to, but demonized through biography and labeling. The protester is considered an enemy and not part of democracy, while the critic is treated not as a different voice, but as an object of pressure.

When a political establishment thinks it is infallible and reaches the point of addressing society with intimidation and removing the moral right to disagree with it, it means that the relationship between them has entered a crisis and, although it may still be institutionally strong, it has weakened politically.

And, the more the arrogance of politics grows, the more it proves that it has ceased to understand society and that its language is now the language of insecurity and not of strength.

Meanwhile, those who speak in such a tone today forget that they are intimidating citizens who may have voted for them yesterday. They are arrogantly addressing people who, in a few months, will be knocking on their doors again to ask for their votes.

In a democracy, you cannot behave with the logic of the owner. The mandate is not a deed of ownership over the citizens, but a temporary contract with them.

When this contract is replaced by arrogance, politics begins to believe that voting is an obligation and not a choice. That is where the disconnect from reality arises.

Many "democratic" regimes have fallen not because opponents suddenly became strong, but because the elites themselves lost the ability to understand society, heard only the echo of their own voices, and interpreted the citizens' continued silence as approval.

Citizens can endure a lot. Poverty, ridicule, robbery, injustice, emigration and disappointment. But there comes a moment when patience turns into rejection. And this moment always comes unexpectedly for politics disconnected from reality. Every political elite that has thought that the citizen is insignificant has ended up realizing too late that the voter can be silent for a while. But he rarely forgets the way he was spoken to.

Therefore, the aggressive language we are hearing is the clearest sign of fear, which has two explanations.

Or the end of the political establishment is closer than the establishment itself imagines, and this explains its growing nervousness.

Or politicians have become so blinded by power (the money that comes from power and the power that comes from money) that they can no longer distinguish the line between authority and arrogance, between leadership and intimidation, between citizen and subject.

In both cases, the loser is democracy.