In fact, the crucial attribute shared by Milei, Musk and Trump - along with bottomless energy, idées fixe, and relentless will - is a lack of empathy. (It’s also true, to lesser or greater degrees, of successful leaders from the past, like Thatcher and De Gaulle.) Living in a closed-off mental world is not conducive to good relationships or to happiness, and it’s often a disadvantage in politics (and business). But in certain circumstances, an empathy deficit flips into being a superpower. It turns out that if you don’t care about pleasing people, you can get very popular.

In the 1960s, the psychiatrist R.D. Laing argued that insane individuals were operating according to a hidden rationality, adopting strategies forced upon them by repressive and dishonest families. Society was mad, not them. Psychotic individuals often named uncomfortable truths about their families that others were invested in denying. Laing’s theory is now discredited within psychiatry, but in the symbolic world of politics it still resonates. Only the desequilibrado have the audacity and agency to take on an unhealthy, entrenched status quo.