While humanity frets about the US-Israeli war with Iran, the American president keeps making conflicting declarations which muddy the picture. From the beginning of the conflict on February 28, Donald Trump has been declaring, or posting on his Truth Social, that Iran’s military has been wiped out, that he will destroy Iran and its civilization, that the war has ended or is ending very soon.
Elon Musk’s AI Grok counted that on the Axios news site alone, Trump has declared 11 times that the war was ending or had ended. The globally significant issue of the war, however, is just one field in which the US president is showing that after his first-term war on truth (with the concept of “alt-truth”), he is now trying to destroy language itself, depriving words of their meaning. In both cases, the result is that Trump creates such confusion that no one knows what is true and what is false, and so he leads everyone into a world in which he alone sets the rules. (Much like his so-called Board of Peace).
Trump’s relationship with language illustrates his thinking and his strategy. Before we go further into this, however, we ought to note that perhaps Trump cannot have complicated, nuanced thoughts, and that’s why he uses basic structures, such as Good/Bad, Black/White, Victory/Defeat. Maybe that’s why he relies so much on threats, flattery, bullying and declarations of self-admiration. In any case, the rest of the world tries to interpret his logic, as if he does have a strategy. He would like to persuade us that he does have one, as his “Art of the Deal” suggests. But here, too, a synopsis of his methods could be the utilization of self-promotion and the pursuit of publicity. If we do discern a plan, it is the usual “flooding the zone” with nonsense, so that no one knows what is going on, leaving the field open for Trump to declare whatever he wishes.
