Trump’s latest act of linguistic rebellion and the case against capital-ism

Sometimes, you gotta wonder whether the man has been placed on earth for a purpose other than the one(s) he believes he has been. Or others worry he's here for. We suspect that beyond the politics and geopolitics, that purpose is to bring about a radical philosophical change.

Trump's latest act of linguistic rebellion - referring to the 'supreme court' in lowercase 'based on a complete lack of respect!' - has greater consequences than meets the eye. In fact, it may be the most coherent thing anyone's done for the english language since ee cummings, the 20th-c. poet who aimed to subvert authority, and focus on immediate, individual experience by decapitalising words and unpunctuating sentences. Willy-nilly, trump comes out as an english language iconoclast in the same mould.

On a bigger scale, lower-casing it is not contempt but about linguistic democracy. Capital letters are aristocrats of the alphabet, strutting around like they own the place. Why should 'god' get a capital while 'gravity' - far more omnipresent and certainly palpable - doesn't? 'MAGA' would be far less in-your-face and convincing as 'maga', no?


Indian languages, with their blissful absence of uppercase rules, have never suffered this tyranny. In hindi, bengali, tamil, marathi, kannada, assamese... every word is equal - no letter lords, no peasant vowels. Down with capital-ism!