So the former president’s latest health check is unveiled, and the predictable chorus of sycophants declares him fit for a second term. We are to believe a man who subsists on a diet of fast food and tweets, whose every public appearance resembles a controlled demolition, is a paragon of vitality. Meanwhile, British medical experts, still clinging to the shreds of their profession’s dignity, call for a reform of how such ‘assessments’ are conducted.
They might as well be shouting into a hurricane. This is not a matter of medicine. It is a matter of theatre.
The doctor’s statement, carefully crafted to avoid any accusation of falsehood while conveying a deliberate impression of vigour, is a genre of political fiction. It is the literary equivalent of a waxwork: lifelike only to the willfully blind. We have seen this before, of course.
In the final years of the Roman Republic, generals would stage mock triumphs to prove their continuing virility. The patricians would applaud, knowing full well the rot had set in. Trump’s health check is our triumph.
The real crisis is not the President’s cholesterol. It is the erosion of any shared standard of truth. We demand transparency, but what we get is a photogenic lie.
The doctors who sign such documents must choose between their oath and their ambition. Too many choose poorly. The reform urged by the British medics would be a first step: independent examinations, public disclosure of raw data, an end to the PR fluff.
But who will enforce this? A press that has become a stenography of power? A public that prefers the comfort of a tailored narrative?
We are in the late stages of an empire, where the health of the ruler is a state secret and a myth. The only honest diagnosis is for the republic itself: critical, but not yet terminal. Yet without a dose of collective realism, we shall continue to mistake the gilded cage for a parliament of health.
Trump’s health check is not news. It is a symptom. And the prognosis is grim.
