Those times when 'We' can say a lot

While US President Donald Trump is usually excoriated on Twitter for peddling an exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies — though not with such an engagingly recondite turn of phrase, of course — his latest tweet, a single word, deserves unqualified praise. Though he speedily deleted it, 'We' clearly proved to be the ultimate catalyst for catharsis as thousands promptly completed what is suspected to have been an inadvertent holophrase.

It was a masterly if unintentional gambit to assess what his 29-million Twitter followers in the US and the world are exercised about at this time. More specific pronouncements, couched in inevitably longer words, would probably not have evoked the prodigious effusion of cerebrations that a single one did. That it was retweeted thousands of times also speaks volumes about the medium and the message.

Sesquipedalians, especially in the political arena, have hopefully realised that a thousand well-chosen syllables need not necessarily be as pithy as one accidental one. Indeed, political analysts looking back on the Trump administration could well cite this abortive but evocative tweet as a powerful if short-lived message of unity and inclusiveness by a beleaguered president to a riven country. Imagine if he had tweeted ‘Be', ‘He' or even ‘Me' instead.