There are historical moments when language is strained but holds. Revolutions, wars, economic collapses – each demands new vocabularies, sharper metaphors, more imaginative commentary. Yet even in those crises, writers trusted that carefully chosen words could still rise to meet reality. The present age feels different. Each headline brings a shock that defies ordinary language. To describe anything accurately today feels like minimizing it – not because the description is wrong, but because no description can do justice to the preposterousness of it all.

In the Trump era, everything I write is an understatement.

Political commentary presumes a shared scale on which we make judgements. It assumes exaggeration is possible and that outrage can be expressed in simple words that can be understood. And that this scale has an upper boundary of shock. But we have crossed this boundary. The grotesque and the unprecedented has become part of our daily routine. We are in new territory, or rather in another solar system. It feels as if we have entered a science fiction movie that introduces new elements every few minutes that we must struggle to make sense of. And as soon as we think we get it, a new parallel plot appears in some other corner of the galaxy, and then another one, each with its own last-minute twists.

In the Trump era, the common reality we all once shared has vanished.

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