The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is an open world video game that I’ve been obsessed with for months. In the game, you play as the hero “Link” exploring a new version of “Hyrule” that now stretches across the ground, sky, and the mysterious depths. Travel within and between the three realms is initially difficult. But as you play and accumulate (or create) certain devices, movement between the regions becomes easier.

The depths are a mirror of the surface. Where on the surface you find a mountain, in the depths you find a canyon. As the game begins the depths are awash in darkness you can illuminate by activating “Lightroots,” tall beacons that throw off cones of light.

While traversing the depths and the dark between Lightroots, you can further light your path by using Brightbloom Seeds, throwable items that sprout into glowing plants.

This weekend while hunting for an armor upgrade and not writing my newsletter, I returned to a place I had visited in my opening hours of gameplay, hundreds of hours ago, and the Brightbloom Seeds I placed were still there. 

I was shocked.

We refer to this feature of a game as object permanence, the ability, first articulated by Piaget, to understand that objects possess a continuous existence independent of one’s immediate perception. Just because you’re no longer looking at the fridge doesn’t mean it’s not still there. Similarly, if you tell your allies to go pound sand and threaten to commit genocide in an unhinged late night tweet, just because you’ve moved on from it, doesn’t mean the world has.  

The term object permanence in this presidential context, as was introduced to me via this conversation, reflects what commentators describe as the President’s “instinctual” and “transactional” nature. 

The instinctual part is real. His decisions are uninformed by history, precedent, or even what happened last week. His existing prejudices and financial interest are the best codex for interpreting or predicting his impulses. 

To call him transactional is true, but also misses the mark. He is transactional but each transaction is a wholly separate entity. He approaches each deal or moment directly in front of him as a unique event. He doesn’t seem to care or grasp that others carry understanding informed by his priors. 

The President and the Whitehouse also operate under what has been described as a social media first culture. It permeates the entire administration. For instance, the FBI Director has been criticized for livetweeting his way through major investigations, seemingly caring more about impressions and responses to his posts than the investigations he is meant to be leading.

The “Social Media First President” made at least 130 posts on Truth Social between April  5th and 12th, an average of 16 posts per day. He followed that spree up with a busy Sunday on April13 that included a post where he accused the Pope of being “weak on crime” and shared an AI image depicting himself as Jesus. The bipolar (a description, not a diagnosis) nature of all of this screams to anyone listening “we are not in good hands.”

Today, I want to talk through a few of those 130 posts and what they can tell us. 

On Easter Sunday (April 5th) the President, told the Iranian leadership to “open the fuckin’ strait, you crazy bastards.” The post refers to the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway in the Middle East that is effectively closed—a situation that has persisted since the early days of the American war.

He closed his message with “praise be to Allah,” a remark intended to mock the Islamic regime.

Two days later (April 7th), as the Tuesday deadline he created on Easter approached, he escalated his bellicosity with the genocidal threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” 

You don’t have to be an alarmist to read this as a threat to use nuclear weapons on Iran. 

This piece “Is Trump About To Nuke Iran? The fact we can't say "no" for sure should terrify us”  was making the rounds that evening. At the time, I didn’t think the use of nuclear weapons was especially likely, but the fact that many people with ties and loved ones in the Gulf were seriously contemplating the possibility was alarming. 

Before the deadline, the President announced a two week ceasefire agreement with Tehran. By the next day (April 8), according to John Karl at ABC, he pivoted from threatening to end Iranian and Persian civilization to wheeling and dealing, hoping  to get a share of proceeds from reported  Iranian  tolls on the strait: 

President Donald Trump told ABC News on Wednesday morning that the US may seek a "joint venture" with Iran to safeguard the Strait of Hormuz, following his Tuesday announcement of a two-week ceasefire. 

"We're thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It's a way of securing it — also securing it from lots of other people," Trump said when asked whether he would allow Tehran to charge tolls for shipping to transit the strategic waterway. "It's a beautiful thing," the president added. 

Readers will be unsurprised to learn Iran did not accept the proposed joint venture. And the fact Iran is now tolling ships that pass through the strait and accepting payment in crypto is a whole newsletter in itself. 

By Sunday (April 12), unable to reach a deal with those “crazy bastards” in Iran and unable to get in on the crypto tolls, the President announced he was going to blockade the strait with the US Navy. Please recall that this stage of the war is largely about re-opening the strait. His post was long and at times incoherent, but contained the following: 

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all ships trying to enter, or leave the Strait of Hormuz.” 

He went on to accuse Iran of “WORLD EXTORTION” and threatened that any Iranian vessel who fires as the navy “will be BLOWN TO HELL!”

These aren’t the words of a well man, nor someone we should trust with the nuclear codes for the country’s arsenal. But 70 million people in a country with 340 million people in it voted for him and that’s how US elections work, so here we are. 

Again, this is all within the week and later Sunday evening he shared this aforementioned AI Jesus picture. 

I don’t know what more to say at this point but next week I’m definitely going to write about something different.

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We published a travelogue about our trip to Fujairah in northern UAE, where we were when the war broke over at BowlingsAbroad. At the bottom Hope captured all the war and dislocation related stuff we’ve published. Check it out.

Lastly, shout out to my niece “Peanut” who on Sunday was like “unc you didn’t send an email this week.”