Tag: American politics

There is a particular cruelty in a medical report. Unlike a political speech, a budget forecast, or an election manifesto all genres of creative literature to which democratic publics have made a resigned peace a medical report carries with it the residual authority of science. When a doctor speaks, we are conditioned, in some prelinguistic way, to believe them. Which is precisely why what has happened to American presidential medicine under Donald Trump is so arresting. The clinic has been converted into a theatre, the stethoscope swapped for a megaphone, and the diagnosis subordinated entirely to the demands of the narrative.