There is a certain, wearying elegance to the way modern political discourse has finally abandoned the cumbersome shackles of objective reality. We have entered the era of the ‘Linguistic Fiat,’ where a statement is true simply because it has been uttered with sufficient volume and a characteristic lack of hesitation. The latest exhibit in this gallery of the grotesque comes to us from Donald Trump, who has informed a bewildered world that Hamas has ‘agreed’ to give up their weapons. It is a proclamation that carries all the weight of a toddler announcing he has successfully negotiated a ceasefire with the concept of bedtime. One can almost hear the collective sigh of the diplomatic corps, a group of people who have spent decades failing to achieve what the former president has apparently accomplished between sets of golf.

The rhetoric employed here—the promise that the militant group will be ‘blown away’ should they fail to comply—is classic Trumpian baroque. It is the language of the mob boss masquerading as the high priest of peace. In the cynical theater of American elections, nuance is a casualty that nobody bothers to mourn. Instead, we are treated to the spectacle of a man who views the centuries-old, blood-soaked complexities of the Levant as a simple matter of brand management. If Hamas hasn't been told they’ve agreed to disarm, that is merely a minor clerical error in the grander narrative of his inevitable triumph. It is a masterful stroke of geopolitical fan-fiction, delivered with the breezy confidence of a man who believes he could talk a shark into becoming a vegan if the ratings were high enough.

From my vantage point in the more exhausted corners of the European consciousness, this entire episode is a delightful exercise in tragicomedy. We see the American political machine grinding its gears, attempting to manufacture a ‘strongman’ solution to a problem that has swallowed empires whole. The phrase ‘blown away’ is particularly telling. It is a cinematic threat, a bit of low-budget action-movie dialogue designed to satisfy a domestic audience that craves the illusion of decisive power. It ignores the inconvenient truth that you cannot simply ‘blow away’ an ideology, nor can you threaten a group that views martyrdom as a promotion into a better real estate market. But in the world of the orange-hued oracle, these are merely footnotes to the grand story of his own prowess.

The bureaucratic incompetence required to let such a statement hang in the air unchallenged is, quite frankly, a work of art. The State Department must be vibrating with the kind of low-grade panic that usually precedes a total systemic collapse, while the rest of the world watches with the grim fascination one might reserve for a tightrope walker who has decided to replace the rope with a strand of overcooked spaghetti. We are witnessing the final death of diplomacy as a craft, replaced by a series of aggressive marketing slogans. The idea that a militant organization, currently entrenched in a brutal survival struggle, would suddenly opt for a ‘buy-one-get-one-free’ deal on total surrender is the kind of absurdity that only makes sense if you’ve spent too much time breathing in the recycled air of private jets and gilded ballrooms.

Of course, both sides of this equation are equally steeped in their own brands of idiocy. On one hand, you have the American right, which treats these pronouncements as gospel, and on the other, the pearl-clutching liberals who act as if this is the first time a politician has ever lied about foreign policy. It is a dance of the intellectually bankrupt. We are being asked to choose between a fantasy of violent resolution and a reality of perpetual stalemate. I find it hard to muster anything but a sophisticated disdain for the whole affair. The reality is that the weapons in Gaza will not be laid down because of a threat issued from a campaign rally, and the world will not be ‘saved’ by a man who thinks the Middle East is a puzzle with a ‘skip level’ button.

In the end, this is just more noise in an already deafening century. Trump’s claim is the ultimate ‘I told you so’ in waiting—a prediction built on sand that will inevitably wash away, allowing him to blame the subsequent failure on the incompetence of everyone else. It is a perfect loop of accountability-dodging. As the actors in this collapsing theater of the absurd continue to scream their lines at an increasingly bored audience, the rest of us are left to ponder the wreckage of a political culture that can no longer distinguish between a peace treaty and a press release. It would be funny if the stakes weren’t so depressingly high, but since they are, I shall simply pour another glass of something expensive and wait for the next act of the farce to begin.