Let us dissect the digital entrails of a man who, by all account, has turned political discourse into a perpetual cycle of score-settling. A recent analysis of 3,000 of Donald Trump’s social media posts reveals a singular obsession: revenge and grievance. This is not news, but a confirmation of what any attentive observer of the American scene has long suspected. The man’s entire public persona is a monument to ressentiment, that Nietzschean term for the moralising hostility of the weak who dream of power. Yet Trump was President. He was the most powerful man on earth. And still, he writes like a jilted lover, a small-time hustler nursing a grudge. This is the intellectual decadence of our age: the cult of the perpetual victim, even among the mighty.
Consider the historical parallels. The late Roman Republic was consumed by the politics of personal enmity, with men like Catiline and Clodius using mob violence and public spectacle to settle private scores. Trump’s posts are the digital equivalent of the graffiti that covered Pompeii: crude, repetitive, and obsessed with enemies. Every perceived slight, every bad review, every court loss becomes a fresh indictment of a vast conspiracy against him. This is not leadership. It is the pathology of a man who cannot conceive of a world that does not revolve around his own grievances. The Victorians would have called it ‘a want of moral fibre’, a phrase that perfectly captures the shallowness of the man.
But America, and by extension the West, is in love with this narrative. We have elevated grievance to a national sacrament. Every group, every tribe, every self-appointed victim demands its day in the sun. Trump merely distilled this into a pure, unadulterated form. His 3,000 posts are a mirror held up to a society that has lost its sense of honour, duty, and common purpose. We no longer ask what we can do for our country; we ask what our country owes us. And Trump, like some grotesque carnival barker, promises to make everyone pay.
Yet there is a deeper rot here. The obsession with revenge is a sign of intellectual bankruptcy. A man who can only think about settling scores has no room for constructive thought. He cannot build, only tear down. This is the hallmark of a decadent civilisation: when the energy of the people is spent on resentment rather than creation. The Roman Empire fell not because of barbarians at the gates, but because its elites became obsessed with their own feuds. Trump’s posts are a symptom of a similar decline. We are so busy hating each other that we have forgotten how to build a future.
The content of these posts is banal. Insults, nicknames, and wild accusations. But their volume is staggering. Three thousand posts of pure venom. It is a monument to a man who has nothing else to offer. And yet, millions follow him, absorbing this poison as if it were a tonic. We have become a nation of rage addicts, feeding on the grievance of a man who cannot let go. This is not politics. It is a therapy session for the terminally angry.
Let us not pretend this is a surprise. The ancient Greeks warned us about hubris and the cycle of revenge. The story of the Oresteia is about breaking the chain of bloodshed. Trump’s 3,000 posts are a chain of words, each one forged in the fire of a petty slight. We need a new Aeschylus to write the ending, but instead we have a man who would rather burn the theatre down than admit he lost. This is the tragedy of our times.
In conclusion, the analysis of Trump’s posts is a chilling reminder: we are living through the death throes of an empire that has lost its nerve. The obsession with revenge is a symptom of a deeper sickness, one that will not be cured by more tweets. It requires a rebirth of public virtue. But I do not see that happening. The grievance machine churns on, and we are all its grist.
