La Voz de Galicia – March 28, 2025 →
I was watching the second season of the British series “Wolf Hall”, based on Hilary Mantel’s novels about the life of Thomas Cromwell, who was King Henry VIII’s right-hand man (secretary, minister). And I couldn’t stop thinking about the modern-day equivalents of these 16th-century figures. As the series progressed, I found myself reflecting on the current U.S. president and his relationships with his advisors, with other countries, with his wives, with himself, with power. I thought about it so much that I added the topic to my list of “ideas for columns.” But today, as I was reading about both “sovereigns”, I realized my own sovereign ignorance, because for years, the media has drawn this very same parallel (as in the 2020 documentary “Henry VIII & Trump: History Repeating?”). And the man who served as Donald Trump’s right-hand during his first term, Steve Bannon, once said, “I am Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors”. After learning that, I was stuck on the key difference between the two: one was a king who inherited a throne, the other is a president elected through a democratic process.
For hundreds (thousands) of years, we have been navigating somewhere between utopia and dystopia, taking one step forward in human rights and two steps back; fighting for peace while waging war, promoting equality while deepening inequality, defending democracy and… Sometimes, it seems that as a society, we are incapable of moving forward without shooting ourselves in the foot, without self-destructing. And that is the reality we face today, as those in power advise us to prepare survival kits to endure the potential harm we might inflict upon ourselves.
