Photo: Andrew Harnick / Getty
The real catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes: a spectacle of helplessness, attempts to defame the reporter and – even worse – the hidden threat of autocracy that cannot be disguised or encrypted. Every era produces its own symbolic fools and simpletons. In the past, they were Mac Sennett’s Keystone Cops, the Three Stooges, the 1962 Mets, Beavis and Butthead, Wayne and Garth. In Stanley Kubrick’s classic Cold War masterpiece Dr Strangelove, the idiots are not holding cream pies, but apocalyptic weapons. Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden, is so paranoid about a fictional communist plan to “suck out and purify our precious bodily fluids” that he becomes “a little ridiculous” and orders a thermonuclear strike against the Soviet Union. But such fantastical carelessness is only possible in comic fantasy, isn’t it?
This was reported by The New Yorker.
In the first months of Donald Trump’s second administration, the traits of anger, vengeance and staggering speed have somewhat overshadowed the incompetence of its leaders. However, this has become particularly evident in recent articles in The Atlantic. The magazine’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, recounted how he accidentally joined a group chat on the commercial messaging system Signal, dubbed a “small group of PC hussies”. Sitting in his car in a Safeway car park, Goldberg watched in amazement as senior national security officials discussed the details of bombing Houthi positions in Yemen.
Part of the comedy of Goldberg’s story lies in the revelation that the vice president and heads of key defence and intelligence agencies use emojis as often as high school students. But there is a more serious side that is unsurprising: when these venerable members of the administration were caught in a potentially deadly slip-up, they did what their president would have wanted them to do. They attacked the reputation and integrity of a reporter – a man who, incidentally, appeared to be far more concerned about national security than the adviser on the matter. And then they refused to give Congress direct answers about their mistake and the sensitivity of these reports. From cabinet members to presidential press secretary Carolyn Leavitt, everyone followed the principles Trump inherited from the late Roy Cohn: never apologise. And to always throw mud at the person who brought the bad news.
This scandal, which has been dubbed Signalgate, exposes not only incompetence but also a deeper problem: a willingness to sacrifice security to preserve power and image. While the administration tries to deflect attention by blaming the messenger, the real threat – the autocratic tendencies that are gaining momentum – remains in plain sight. And no amount of emojis or slander can hide it.
