A sitting president speaks of world extermination – and the world barely looks up.
There was a time – not so long ago – when a statement from a sitting president that another nation wants to “exterminate the world” would have detonated across the political landscape. It would have triggered emergency debates, wall-to-wall coverage, and grave discussions about judgment, stability, and the terrifying weight of nuclear rhetoric.
Now, it barely lingers for a news cycle.
When Donald Trump warns of apocalyptic destruction in the context of Iran, the words land with a dull thud rather than a sharp crack. Not because they are any less dangerous – but because the world has been conditioned to expect them. Shock, it turns out, has a shelf life. And we have exceeded it.
This is how democratic norms erode – not always through dramatic rupture, but through repetition. The outrageous becomes familiar. The familiar becomes background noise. And eventually, the unthinkable becomes just another line in a transcript.
There is, of course, always an explanation ready at hand. Analysts speak of strategy, of calculated unpredictability, of the so-called “madman theory” dressed up as geopolitical chess. Perhaps. But even if one accepts that premise, it raises a more unsettling question: what happens when the performance of madness is indistinguishable from the real thing?
The danger is no longer just in the words themselves, but in our diminished reaction to them. A public that no longer flinches at the language of annihilation is a public that has, in some quiet and reluctant way, adapted to it. And a media environment that treats such rhetoric as routine risks becoming an accomplice to that adaptation – not through malice, but through fatigue.
This is the deeper story. Not what was said, but what wasn’t felt in response.
Because when the most extreme language available to a leader of a nuclear-armed state fails to shock, it is not the words that have changed.
It is us.
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You have to be on your toes these days, there is so much misinformation rubbing up against alternative facts that half an hour of SKY after Dark and you would believe that Donald is the Messiah and Bibi has the welfare of the Palestinian people at heart.
The crazy Israeli Ambassador to Australia was today saying how well things were going with the Lebanon invasion and how happy the Lebanese people were after 1.2million of them were herded from their homes, which were then bulldozed and they were now able to follow new and productive lives free of the impositions of Hezbollah.
I am hearing that the likes of Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin , Paul Murray etc at SKY are asking for more money ; it’s not that they object to telling the lies but that they do want a share of the Murdoch millions to do so.
Michael said — “This is how democratic norms erode…”
Very true, but it seems that there has been a global awakening that democracy has been taken for granted; that not enough has been done to protect it.
Because we see the world over that countries of all persuasions are turning their backs on the US way of going about business.
Is Trump actually doing the world a favour??
If that is the case, it’s terrible to think that so many have to die so that the world can see what has been what has been obvious for so long.
You’re right, Steve. The tide is turning. Slowly.
But there have been some signs over the past week: MAGA diehards turning against Trump, the Hungarian election results, Carney going from strength to strength, the stirring of dissent in OZ.
I just realised what Donnies head reminds me of: A shrivelled decaying Halloween pumpkin with a toupee along with all the charm and intelligence of Yersinia pestis.
Terry,
When Trumpetarse finally goes, or kicks the bucket, scumbags like Bolt, Credlin, Murray another assorted RRWNJ’s around the world will just move on and act as if nothing has happened.
‘The danger is no longer just in the words themselves, but in our diminished reaction to them… and then there was the Washington Post today, deleting the past: ‘DOJ moves to undo Jan. 6 rioters’ convictions for seditious conspiracy’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/04/14/january-6-convictions-seditious-conspiracy
THE GROWING HORNS OF DICTATORSHIP
Horrific but predictable – US is a pit of dens, hatred and violence, and of course it would be with more guns than dogs, illegal foreign wars, and the Trump imposter administration to democracy releasing violent thugs and gangs, traitors and convicted criminals – free to intimidate with immunity at the next election. If he hasn’t started WW3, he’s done his damndest to destroy it, world peace, free trade, rule of law, justice, international cooperation, shutting down oil round the horn of Hormuz strangling the world’s economies, spreading lies, never ending false news and regime propaganda. Domestically there will be no need for insurrection, next time round he will secure this dictatorship, the illusion of empire just as Rome did. Hell he may even declare himself the saviour of mankind and finally show his greasy grey orange horns.
What’s the alternative – He and Netanyahu facing prosecution for crimes against humanity, now looking rather slim. Like Putin, the path is set. Like Iran, the evil regimes on both sides are being fed, while Myanmar’s gangs conduct their industrial scale scamming, kidnapping and slave trade under the radar, unopposed, holding the rest of the free world between them to ransom and the dark web.
CHASING OUR TAIL
The news cycle is being carpet bombed – both by its commercial design and by deliberate intent, and that is how you silence the world against the onslaught of abuse, bullying, corruption, injustice, wars and crimes against humanity.
The rhetoric becomes acceptable, indifference becomes the norm, overwhelmed by the volume of lies, excuses, intimidation, distraction, information and misinformation, and propaganda – the world becomes exhausted, fearful or turns away. The dictator is born – not just echoes of 1939, but more so now than ever in our history, when news travels at the speed of light. Just try and catch it let alone digest it, respond and find a path.
Perhaps not on topic but shows how words can be bent to make an almost plausible lie.
https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_0.315%2C$multiply_2.1296%2C$ratio_1.5%2C$width_756%2C$x_48%2C$y_0/t_crop_custom/q_62%2Cf_auto/556e4e43fa170fecf544a796e8cb86f7c0e3f453
This post may need to be deleted because I cannot clear away the unwanted verbage from the cartoon. Your choice Michael.
He prevails because Americans’ propensity for beliefs, sentiments, Christianity, worship of authority, conspiracy theories, BS, lying and money, but no push back against authority?
Just ‘meh’ and make excuses to neither challenge nor vote? Passiveness masked by noise; many in Australia similar…..
The post or your comment, NEC?
I’m rather keen to retain both.
Hegseth believes it is a holy war to bring on Armageddon.
https://theaimn.net/good-grief-jesus-freaks-taking-over-military-indoctrination/
This nonsense has been going around the US Bible Belt Christians for decades.
It can be read in Hal Lindsey’s ‘Late Great Planet Earth’
https://www.agathonlibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Lindsey-Hal-The-Late-Great-Planet-Earth-by-Hal-Lindsey_text-archive.org_.pdf
All the Armageddon Gog and Magog nonsense it there. A complete misunderstanding or deliberate distortion of the book of Revelation.
For the antidote from a real Christian theologian read:
Goldsworthy — Gospel in Revelation
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3354353
Which clearly explains that John (writer of Revelation) was talking about the times they were living in. It was written in a literary style of the time, not about events 2,000 years in the future.
But the Koran is similarly misinterpreted and distorted, by radical Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
I have a swirling vague dream “list” for, er, pruning, or perhaps culling, but it is a dirty dream of extermination, as one’s inner heart rebels and fights against the never ending oppressive threats against us all by nightmare figures of entrenched evil. We swell and shrivel, dreamily, but mostly fear the impotence of deadly fate by ultramaggotty misfits, monsters, muck. About fifty or so feature, with a rising number of deadshit vanity saturated defective political fronters and their minnows, their fellatio friendly selfpromoting egofixated poseurs. Who would not wish to live in a better, cleansed, harmonious, thriving world? Adolfian Trumpian superstition driven error must be eliminated.
@ Michael Taylor: Don’t you dare remove your article!!
Thank you for your kind words. I thought that the cartoon displayed the ”thinking” of the LIARBRAL$ pretty well ….. and the comments were also very informative.
Yeah, nah. I still reckon the orange oaf is completely fucking insane. Whether it’s dementia or something else, I’ll leave to the medical fraternity to decide.
I agree that Trump’s words should be the trigger for the 25th amendment.
But for some reason the term ‘days of innocence’ came to mind today, the following reflection was centred around how the internet, for all its faults, had allowed us to expose the more likely truth. Things were not so innocent in our childhood as we believed.
Recently, I watched a video that put up a plausible theory that WWI was about the British empire not wanting Germany constructing a railroad to Iraq for oil, and not the assassination in Serbia.
But, more to the point of Michael’s article:
‘In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, Clinton was asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.
She replied: “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.’
Memory of the incident has long got lost somewhere in the grey matter, but I don’t remember any great reaction to Clinton’s threat of genocide.
Either way, here’s where we are….
We are all feeling vulnerable, unsafe and uncertain, the energy of fear, that’s what that fools legacy is.