It’s pointless to announce, at any given moment, that the second Trump administration has hit a new low. There’s always next week, and the likelihood of deeper and ever more painful absurdities: Drinking straws are causing gender confusion; many Americans are declining COVID boosters and therefore no Americans may have them; the price of eggs has fallen so far so fast that the supermarket now pays you. As I wrote a few months ago, we now seem devoted as a nation to acting out the thesis of Leonard Cohen’s final hit single, “You Want It Darker,” released the day before Donald Trump’s election in 2016.
Furthermore, in the face of a widening campaign of abduction and deportation conducted by masked, armed paramilitaries with no identifiable uniforms, Trump’s theatrical displays in the Oval Office can justifiably be viewed as irrelevant distractions. But still: For the president of the United States to accuse the government of South Africa, in 2025, of conducting a racial genocide is so craven, so shameless, that beggars any rational description.
