Bangladesh, Dec. 16 -- The rise of authoritarian populism is not merely a constitutional emergency or a moral aberration: it is the empirical symptom of a metaphysical decay. When truth itself becomes partisan, when the good is reduced to preference, and when beauty is debased to spectacle, a civilization has already begun to lose the conditions of its intelligibility. The argument proceeds from a simple yet profound claim: that the human world derives meaning only through participation in universality—the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. When that participation collapses, so too does the moral and epistemic fabric of society.

Donald Trump serves here not as an isolated political figure but as a sign, almost an allegory, of this ...