The Eight Who Learned Nothing

Eight votes were enough to end the longest government shutdown in American history. Eight votes that led the country out of paralysis - and at the same time plunged it deeper into self-forgetfulness. They came from senators who see themselves as pragmatists, as bridge builders, as saviors from chaos. In truth, they have shown that they still do not understand the nature of that chaos.

Dick Durbin of Illinois, Angus King of Maine, Tim Kaine of Virginia, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, as well as Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada - they all gave in when political exhaustion triumphed over insight. They voted to end a stalemate that had long been more than a budget dispute. It was a power struggle over the nature of democracy.

Because Trump has never fought over numbers, he has fought over submission. He wants to prove that the state only exists if he wills it. That rules, institutions, even Congress, are ultimately props meant to legitimize his arbitrariness. And these Eight gave him the signal he needed - that he is still treated like a president and not like what he has long since become - a permanent state of emergency in a suit. In Washington they call that compromise. But in truth it was the opposite of statecraft. It was the moment when the fear of the next tweet became greater than the fear of history. They wanted to return to normality, even though every day of this presidency is proof that there is no normality left.

These Eight, their spokespeople say, have "saved the country from even greater harm." But what harm do they mean - the harm of the budget blockade or the one Trump is already inflicting on the foundations of the Republic? Anyone who believes he can be appeased with gestures of reason has not understood that Trump feeds on the capitulation of others. He needs no victories on paper as long as his opponents believe they can preserve the illusion of control. Many in their party reacted with disbelief. In the hours after the vote, X read: "This is not a deal. It is a surrender. Do not bend the knee!" Words that captured the anger of those who in recent weeks had seen hospitals lose their subsidies, food assistance run out, entire cities sink into uncertainty. For millions of families this shutdown was not a political dispute but a daily struggle for survival. And yet eight gave in to the pressure - as if the country had not suffered enough.

Perhaps they really have not. Perhaps they have not felt what it means when a government deliberately uses its own people as hostages. When retirees donate their last groceries because state aid has stopped. When a 71-year-old writes that he gives food from his October allowance to a young worker who can barely afford rent while his SNAP benefits for November are still missing. At the moment we are waiting to see whether the Supreme Court will comment on this today.

Perhaps they see it all only as collateral damage of a system that has grown accustomed to cynicism. Trump understands this fatigue. He feeds on it. His power does not grow from strength but from the exhaustion of his opponents. He knows that a country that tells itself it can tame madness through routine will eventually lose every standard. And the Eight, who let themselves be celebrated as the reasonable ones, are in truth the most visible symptom of this collective numbness.

While in Belem, Brazil, on the edge of the Amazon, 195 countries negotiate to preserve the planet, the U.S. government shines through absence. No official representative has appeared. The silence of the world's largest economy is louder than any speech. It is the silence of a nation that believes it can withdraw from reality even there - and whose political elite still thinks it is playing a familiar game with familiar rules. But the rules no longer apply. Trump has burned them, torn them apart, mocked them - and the country watches as if it were just another spectacle. Eight senators have reinforced him in that belief. Not out of malice, but out of the inability to grasp that one cannot defeat the man who destroys order with order.

They wanted peace. They got peace. But it is the peace of a country that does not realize it is the calm before the great storm.