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An Astronomer Steps Into the Arena [1]

['Greg Dworkin', 'Sabrina Haake']

Date: 2026-06-10  

Dear readers, faithful companions of starry nights, friends of basketballs and lanterns,

Allow me to open this publication with an apology. Yes, a frank and sincere apology. I had accustomed you to nebulae, to pulsars, to the abyssal distances that bring vertigo and wisdom. Today, I will not speak to you of astronomy. My heart is not in it. The news has seized me by the neck, forced me to lower my gaze, to set it upon our planet, upon our era, upon a spectacle that, too, defies understanding, but in an entirely different manner. A spectacle that is nothing celestial, nothing grand, nothing that lifts the soul. A sickening spectacle.

Rest assured, the next publication will return to our beloved cosmos. We shall speak again of stars, of galaxies, of the silent waltz of the planets. But tonight, I step into the arena. Tonight, I speak to you of Donald Trump.

I do so because I can bear it no longer. I do so because the astronomer that I am, accustomed to contemplating mathematical truths, physical constants, universal laws, can no longer endure the torrent of lies, the avalanche of baseness, the macabre carnival that has played out for years. I do so because truth is my homeland, and that homeland is being looted, burned, ridiculed by a man and his court of accomplices, sycophants, and enablers.

So, with the same pen that once described the Crab Nebula, I shall attempt to describe another nebula, far darker, far more toxic. A nebula of falsehood.

Let us begin with the lies. For they are the dark matter of this character: invisible in appearance, yet structuring his entire galaxy. Donald Trump has made lying an art, a sport, a reason for being. We remember his first day in office, when he claimed his inauguration had drawn the largest crowd in history, while aerial photographs showed a sparse National Mall, and his press secretary dared to speak of “alternative facts.” An alternative fact. Ponder that expression. It is as if I told you that the Moon is a rugby ball, and that this is an alternative fact. Since then, it has been a deluge: the 2020 election stolen, without a shred of evidence, repeated thousands of times until crowds came to believe it and stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Fukushima power plant, which he claimed to have visited in 2011. The size of the crowd at his trial, larger than Martin Luther King’s speech. The injections of disinfectant to cure Covid. Each time, the same method: assert, deny, counter-attack, never acknowledge. A fog machine, a blast furnace of untruths. And millions of people, lost in that fog, no longer able to tell fact from illusion.

Let us move on to the actions. For lies would be nothing without deeds. And this man’s deeds are a long litany of baseness. Let us recall January 6, 2021, then. A president who refuses to accept his defeat, who summons a crowd, inflames it for weeks, and tells it, on the day itself, to “fight like hell.” The rest you know: lawmakers hunted, windows shattered, police officers assaulted, beatings, deaths. And Trump, withdrawn in his Oval Office, watching television, relishing it, refusing to call for calm for hours. Hours. The President of the United States, a complicit spectator to an attempted coup d’état. Then, two years later, he is indicted for attempting to overturn the election results in Georgia, with that absurd phone call asking the Secretary of State to “find” exactly 11,780 votes. Find them, as one finds a coin under a sofa. An entire republic held hostage by a number. And all the while, the judges he appointed to the Supreme Court unravel decades of progress, from the right to abortion to environmental protections. The legacy is there, concrete, painful, lasting.

As for the crimes, the word is not too strong. Found liable for sexual abuse by a civil court, in the E. Jean Carroll case. Convicted of financial fraud, him and his organization, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. Indicted for retaining boxes of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence, including files on the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country, piled up in a bathroom. Documents so sensitive they should never have left a secured vault, and which sat alongside golf mementos and press clippings. And when the FBI came to retrieve them, he cried persecution. Persecution, indeed. Like Galileo, like Mandela, like Sakharov. Donald Trump, martyr. Forgive me a bitter laugh.

But the ledger of the absurd does not stop with him. For one man alone cannot do such harm without an army of accomplices, henchmen, sycophants, and enablers. Look at them, those faces of servitude. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, hero of 9/11, reduced to dripping brown hair dye during a delirious press conference in a garden centre parking lot. He claimed that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the election; he was ordered to pay $148 million in damages for defamation. Sidney Powell, the lawyer with the crackpot theories about Venezuelan computer servers, who pleaded insanity to escape prosecution. Jim Jordan, the screaming congressman, who has never passed a single bill in ten years, but spends his time barking at witnesses. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who sees Jewish space lasers and space agents. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who reinstated Trump’s Twitter account and now wallows in the worst conspiracy theories. And the big business leaders, the tech and Wall Street billionaires, who bend the knee and sign cheques, out of fear or greed. Fear and money, always.

And then there are the ridiculous actions. For the ridiculous is never far off in this tragicomedy. Trump talking about his “very beautiful body,” his “golden hands.” Trump altering hurricane maps with a black marker. Trump advising Americans to drink bleach. Trump shaking the hand of a French president until he turned pale, in a simian display of virility. Trump comparing himself to Jesus Christ, to Lincoln, to Napoleon. Trump selling gold sneakers for $399, NFTs, pieces of the suit he wore in prison. Prison, precisely, that supreme indignity. He became the first former American president to be criminally convicted. His mugshot, bloated face, baleful glare, will remain in history books. And he dares, despite this, to run once more, as if nothing had happened. As if shame no longer existed. The absolute cynicism, the abyssal void of a pathological narcissism that recoils from nothing.

Dear readers, I shall stop. Not because material is lacking. It is inexhaustible, alas. But I do not wish to overwhelm you. I wish, rather, in conclusion, to address the true Americans. Those who never believed the lies, or who have ceased to believe them. Those who marched, voted, spoke, resisted. Those who protected their immigrant neighbour, defended their local library, taught science in their classrooms. Those who kept their heads held high when the storm howled.

Do not give in. Do not become accustomed. Indignation is a flame that must be tended, as I tend the lantern of my observing nights. Truth exists. It is not alternative. It is stubborn, tenacious, and it always ends up breaking through, like the light of a distant star piercing the fog. We astronomers know that even the darkest nights are full of stars, invisible to the naked eye but very real. The true America, the generous America, the America of civil rights and sciences, the America of humility and courage, still exists. It is hidden, perhaps, behind the din of puppets and hucksters, but it is there, intact, ready to be reborn.

I return to my telescope. I promise you that next time, we will speak of stars, of the Milky Way, of infinite distances. We need it. But I wanted to tell you, today, that the astronomer is also a citizen. A citizen who is sickened, but not hopeless. A citizen who still believes in the strength of truth, in the power of decency, in the slow and certain victory of light.

Thank you for reading me. See you very soon, beneath the star

François

[END]
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