With writing, a society’s relationship to its own history and to facts changes. A society can adopt writing. Can it lose it? Perhaps it can learn to mistrust writing altogether — a stage toward losing literacy.
Some have understood President Trump’s relationship to truth in terms of postmodernist philosophy; some refer to him as a ‘post-truth’ president. I think it’s worth considering his relationship to writing as a factor. He is sometimes referred to as ‘semi-literate.’ Perhaps, his attack on ‘fake news,’ the ‘failing New York Times,’ and so forth may be understood as an attack on writing and literacy. Among his attacks on other institutions of our civilization (e.g., the courts), I suggest he is attacking literacy itself. The barbarian is within the gates.
What about his tweeting? Certainly his tweets are written. They are examples of a writing of a highly impoverished kind, and they often serve to attack more reasoned writing. They are a record of his unfiltered mood and bear no resemblance to reasoned analysis or chronicle. A sort of anti-writing in letters.