The plaques that cause brain rot
Writing always reveals. Many writers have observed that the act of writing is how they discover what they were thinking. The US President seems to (mis)use language, spelling, grammar to achieve much the same thing.
In a busy period for bananas-things-that-apparently-happened-at-the-top-of-American-leadership, the Donald has given the White House Colonnade a ‘glow-up’ in the form of a series of plaques summarising the achievements of his former Presidential peers. Each one is a sick burn bro! Each one a chance to make clear that only one man has been worthy of the job all along.
You cannot, it turns out, buy class. Image: ABC News.
Biden is castigated for being ‘sleepy’ and ‘crooked’ (yes, every accusation is a confession), somehow a radical left mastermind who was zoned out at the wheel. In a genuinely funny move, instead of a photo, Biden’s is memorialised by a picture of the presidential ‘auto-pen’ that signs documents in a President’s absence – a continuous subject of conspiratorial accusation for the current incumbent.
Every plaque is a shade throw, a score to be settled. ABC news has some brilliant pictures.
The client is always RIGHT!
What’s mostly funny for all the professional writers out there, is how, as in many other contexts, the client has undermined himself. Each pen portrait is riddled with mistaken use of punctuation, Drumpf’s odd Germanic capitalisation rules (there are no rules, only strong men!) leading to a clear sense that this was dictated to an underling.
So much is revealed. That no one can edit the President. That standards of institutional quality are now meaningless. That reality is simply what an ill-educated intemperate man says. Truth is beef. America doesn’t exist except within the monologue of a broken individual’s retributive anger.
Take the Biden one – there’s a lot to unpack!
Nicknamed both "Sleepy" and "Crooked," Joe Biden was dominated by his Radical Left Handlers They and their allies in the Fake News Media attempted to cover up his severe mental decline and his unprecedented use of the Autopen. Following his humiliating debate loss to President Trump in the big June 2024 debate, he was forced to withdraw from his campaign for re-election in disgrace. Biden weaponized Law Enforcement against his political opponent, while also persecuting many other innocent people. He left office issuing blanket pardons to Radical Democrat criminals and thugs, as well as members of the Biden Crime Family — But despite it all, President Trump would get Re-Elected in a Landslide, and SAVE AMERICA!
Given Biden didn’t just throw Trump in jail after the insurrection on January 6th 2021, you’d think there’d be a tiny sliver of appreciation for his predecessor, but no. Trump’s mind, such as it remains, seems to be consumed by score settling and outward deflection of his own accelerating dissolution. “Severe mental decline” (3 ‘annual’ cognitive tests this year, 1 mystery MRI scan, hand bruising indicating possible use of medication to arrest brain plaques)... “Sleepy” yet it’s the current incumbent who’s constantly snoozing during press conferences. “Weaponising law enforcement” … yet Trump’s own chief of staff has just admitted to Vanity Fair that he’s pursuing vendettas against his ‘foes’, using the Department of Justice (and having hired lawyers mostly for their bouffant hair and Dynasty-cast-ready looks, failing at that too).
The mad capitalisation (in Times, not Calibri you wokesters!) has long been a hallmark of his – and is a timeless indication of a man who is scarcely educated and who never reads. Language, it seems, isn’t part of a shared, rule-based reality, where we come to a shared understanding. It’s a WAY of Shouting At You!
Plaques on the brain
The fact that he’s foisted some considerable time developing this alternative-facts history of the US presidency, might prove to be a significant tell. As the year ends, it feels like he’s sort of coasted to a halt as the country’s most raging id.
Congresspeople are planning to retire, spotting a change in the political winds. Inflation is rising. The US economy has stuttered to a halt. A tariff ruling from the Supreme Court beckons. The things that make politics difficult – the need for artful compromise, gamesmanship and savvy, clear-eyed goals – were never Trump’s strong suit. He likes to be a winner, that is all. But once you’ve won that second term, there really aren’t any more gongs and it’s all downhill. The chatter will soon move to the race for a successor. The FIFA Peace Prize isn’t going to assuage his internal turmoil and emptiness. So, bereft of any meaningful political goals, or any understanding of what America might need, he’s decided to memorialise his own success by rewriting the history of everyone else.
For a illiterate, inarticulate man, Trump’s words once worked for him – but only when cannon-fired at his clapping seal fans on Twitter/X and to a lesser extent TruthSocial. The belligerence was the point. Everything zero sum; he’s up, you’re down.
Yet as his power drains away, we begin to see what will be left. Illiterate and petty musings, littered with grammatical mistakes, in gold-effect type, taped up on a wall, destined for a D.C. dumpster in the January of 2029. Photographs of a demolished wing of the White House. Naff, AI’d images of a never-built ballroom with stairways to nowhere. Everything is neurotic vibes, with an American flag somehow in the back of the shot.
As all autocrats have known, writing is a way of colonising other minds, amending reality to what is needed, not what is true. For successful despots, this is a subtle art, one that you might suspect is in effect, but are not able to perceive directly.
For Trump, this level of sophistication is beyond reach. Every gesture is a simpler wager “I need to scream this at you, because I don’t know why I feel like this”. Everything must be about him, because he’s uncomfortable with being himself. Every missive is somehow undermining, a powerless raging against a world that doesn’t respect him and refuses to provide the adoration he craves. As the garish and dumb plaques in the White House Colonnade demonstrate, he’s never really been President at all.
