Dumbocrats
On June 20, 2026, the president of the United States posted on his own social media, Truth Social, the following message:
“POLL: Which do you prefer, Dumocrat or Dumbocrat? In one case, you simply exchange the ‘e’ for ‘u,’ so simple and precise (Many people don’t know, or assume, that DUMB ends in ‘b’). In the other case, you spell out DUMB, but it seems to lose some of the identity to Democrats when done this way. Which is better? Thank you for your attention to this very important matter!”
Dumbocrats, etymologically from dumb + kratos (rule): the rule of the dumbs. I assume ‘democracy’ is not far behind this etymological redefining.
Given the number of catastrophic facts taking urgent central stage, many — to quote the president — are discarding confrontation with his expressions, which thunder and ramble lies and nonsense all too often to give us the time — time retention: another sign of greed — the time, strength and patience to promptly address them more than once in a 24h-news time. Some of his leitmotifs keep recurring though, as he obsessively repeats them, and are amplified by an amused audience — where amusement keeps being the most popular form of collective shock in disavowal. The daily hammering of slogans occasionally obliges you to give more thought to them — and it might turn out for the best after all.
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One of the red flags Benjamin raised when calibrating the quick descent of German inflation into fascism turned to Lichtenberg by way of sharing “Tax Advice” — this being the heading of the related section in One-Way-Street: “Lichtenberg… observes: ‘a few dozen million minutes make up a life of forty-five years, and something more.’ When a currency is in use a few million units of which are insignificant, like will have to be counted in seconds rather than years, if it is to appear a respectable sum.” Not only the devaluation of our lives, but also their unit of measure, the devaluation of our time by our current administration should be taken in the most literal sense.
Sometimes we can regain some solid pound out of a vilified language and have a thoughtful hour out of the decimation of tweet speed with which Trump and co. message and press-brief us. Why has Trump been so concerned with the term “dumbocrats” and, especially, its correct spelling? There is no rally at which Trump did not — some argue: insult his audience suggesting that they do not know how to spell “dumb.” As he wrote on his post, he likes repeating that “many people don’t know, or assume, that DUMB ends in ‘b.’” Among the comedians, Jimmy Kimmel has been reporting on Trump’s English spelling classes consistently since June 2026. Certainly, there is the threat of dumbness hovering above him, which he holds like a mirror for his dear life against his surroundings. There are the charges of ignorance and incompetence, as well, which his entire government is accused of, that stick to the wordplay sticking to him, and the infantilization of a good schoolboy, who knows how to spell it. This comes with a blinking or twitching of the eye to the wonder of magic recalled in every spell. There are many reasons why “dumbocrats” might be Trump’s magic word, a ward against his bad politics he can snap and brandish at his rallies, but I would like to pursue another interpretation here, that comes as a note to my previous piece, which would have been too long to hang out there, a heavy buoy risking to pull down the entire craft.
While the reply “I am not dumb, it’s you!” reverberates from the expression, in all forms mentioned above: “I am not a baby, it’s you!” or “I am not incompetent, it’s you!” there might be something in the spelling bee lesson that is revelatory in a contrary sense. Sure, the discovery of a ‘b’ in ‘dumb’ brings us back to the traumatic incursion of language, the gift undermining infantile omnipotence. How to cope with the fall of (baby) idols? Nazi Germany offered us a response: there is no ‘b’ in ‘dumb’ if you speak German. We can overcome education and responsibility and any sort of ethical or cognitive limitation, and even immortality, by dropping a ‘b’ bomb, or a lesson never learned.
Avital Ronell reminded us that, “in a recent turn that has not ceased to run its course, something on the order of a nihilistic disclosure has been exposed in its distorted human carrier under the Germanic name ‘Trumpf.’ As alien, disturbing, and inassimilable as the invasiveness of the ‘Trump brand’ has been since it crossed over from Germany to Queens to Manhattan, losing the ‘f’ on the shuttle between Florida and Freiburg, it would be wrong to treat this alarming symptom only as a loathsome aberration…” (America, 6) Later on, she returns to the dropped ‘F.’ “Nietzsche was also no stranger to what becomes Adorno’s F-factor on the American scorecard — a cipher for the fascist potential inherent in American forms of democratic governance” (97).
In German, ‘dumb’ is ‘dumm.’ The question of who knows the right spelling takes on a different historical meaning. Who are the many who do not know that there is a ‘b’ in ‘dumb’? Who are those who can read without difficulty that democracy is the rule of the dumbs?
“… Enter Angela Merkel. Queasily accommodating herself to the craft of diplomacy in the twenty-first century, she listens to Trump saying to her that he in fact is a German. Eyeroll, breathwork; her mouth distorts. Once upon a time: we were one Geschlecht. Struck apart, a curse.” (133)
