THE NEED FOR A COLONOSCOPY OF DONALD TRUMP

Analyzing assholes is not my favored occupation, especially not Trump’s asshole

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If there is a political leader who again and again demonstrates that he is full of shit, it is Donald Trump. The fact that such a leader can hold in thrall the entire world tells a lot about the moment in which we live. Since his last big piece of shit we are all compelled to smell is usually characterized as a brutal exercise of recolonization of sovereign countries, it seems natural that the analysis of Trump’s colonial politics should be designated as colonoscopy. The time to do it is now, on the anniversary of Trump’s second term. Colonoscopy is a procedure in which a doctor uses a flexible tube with a camera on one end to look inside your rectum and colon, showing irritated and swollen tissue, ulcers, polyps, and cancer links. To understand why Trump is doing (and not doing) what he is doing, we have to take a closer look at all the irritated tissue and polyps that flourish there. Let me emphasize the disgust I feel in doing this: analyzing assholes is not my favored occupation, especially not Trump’s asshole.

The most concise characterization of Trump is that he is an authoritarian without authority. He has a lot of power and he knows how to use it, brutally violating numerous unwritten (and now more and more even written) rules of social and political life, but he lacks authority, the silent confidence which certain individuals emanate and which confers a special non-violent power on their acts. The fact that Trump has no authority is rendered palpable by his obsession with his self-image: he is not just a spontaneous bully, he closely follows how his words and acts are perceived by the public, and reacts brutally, taking revenge on his enemies. Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out that sincerity and authenticity cannot be named, they can only be shown or displayed by way of practicing them – and a similar logic holds also for worshipping a god: “To paraphrase Stanislav Lem’s personoid Adan 900: Any god that demands our worship doesn’t deserve it.”¹ Of course we can talk about what a speech shows or displays, but not in the first person: I cannot designate myself as authentic, as having dignity, etc. If I do this, I undermine my authenticity or dignity, which can only show itself in how I act – and this is what Trump is doing all the time. Recall his outrage at the fact that he didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize:

“Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace,” Trump said in a message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. He stated that although peace would still be “predominant,” he could “now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”²

So he will change US politics because he didn’t get the Nobel Prize – as if him getting the Peace Prize matters more than world peace itself. Macron has labeled Trump’s tariff threat over Greenland “unacceptable” and rebuffed Trump’s invitation to join the “Board of Peace” to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza. When asked about Macron rejecting the invite, Trump said: “Nobody wants him,” and raised the prospect of 200% tariffs on French wine and champagne. Playing with tariffs in such a capricious way, which violates all free market rules, is clearly opposed to what Mamdani is doing now in New York: he proceeds very carefully, taking care not to disturb the markets. The lesson to be learned from Trump is that markets are much more flexible than we think: they survive “crazy” interventions and quickly recuperate.