If you get to know these two boys, you'll understand the US President

I understand Donald Trump. I'm not saying I like him. Which politician can I possibly like? All I'm saying is that I understand him. Or so I would like to think.

Not having attended any philosophy classes, I never did find out whether my reading of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology was a correct one - that is, the way intended by its author. Similarly, I can't be sure whether my reading of Trumpian linguistics is the correct one, since there has never been confirmation, or denial, from Don Don's end. Perhaps, after this piece, there will be.

But when I heard him last week tell a reporter the following, my ears perked up, and brain whirred gears: 'You don't know that I'm going to even do it [get the US to 'enter' the Israel-Iran conflict]. You don't know. I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I'm going to do. I can tell you this, uh, Iran's got a lot of trouble. And they want to negotiate.'

While American talk-show hosts have been going overdrive, making fun of Trump's 'inarticulate', 'unintelligible', 'unintelligent' utterance(s), his ambiguity over what action to take in West Asia - inaction included - made a lot of sense to me. As he later elaborated, 'I like to make a final decision one second before it's due, you know? Because things change, especially with war. Things change with war. It can go from one extreme to the other.'

He's right. You make plans with the mujaheddin to drive out the Soviets from Afghanistan with Rocky 3 one moment, the next moment you're in Abbottabad waking up a Saudi dude at some ungodly hour for being the wrong kind of mujaheddin, and the next moment you're having a rack of spring lamb with burnt cipollini soubise with a field marshal who, just a month back, was at the Pakistan Military Army at Kakul, in the same Abbottabad, attending the graduation ceremony of the 151st Long Course.

Now, if 6th c. BC philosopher Heraclitus had said 'Things change with war from one extreme to another', everyone would have reckoned this 'cascading decision-making' to be d-e-e-e-p. Conversely, if Trump had said, 'No man ever steps in the same river twice,' Heraclitus' 'theory of flux' would have ended up as just another butt of a Jimmy Fallon joke.

And speaking of butt, upon listening to Trump's 'I may do it. I may not do it' line, I realised who I was reminded of: the great philosopher duo of the 90s - Beavis and Butt-Head. These two busted-sofa-seated animated anti-heroes of the slacker generation, forever glued to a TV, were rude, brash, incoherent, degenerate, hyper-apathetic 'budding misogynists'.

I recognised in them what our parents would call in 'Bengali' 'loafers,' the kind who sat around doing nothing for hours except banter and 'PNPC' (poro ninde poro chorcha, or bitch and pass comments about others). B&BH had this most infectious grunt-snigger - Beavis' heh-heh, heh-heh paired with Butt-Head's huh-huh, huh-huh. Their asynchronous laugh itself was lowbrow Oscar Wilde gold.

Butt-Head was the alpha of the two-pack morons, while Beavis, with his signature bouffant, was the true numpty of all numpties.

B&BH was created by animator-writer Mike Judge as two 'thunderously stupid and excruciatingly ugly' teenage boys. They were meant to be vicious caricatures of 'trailer trash'. But as with many anti-war or anti-drug messages, the very thing being lampooned or critiqued, the two pimple-faced rednecks became utterly alluring in their 'fart for art' jokes.

When Butt-Head says, 'If everything was, like, cool, then how would you know what sucked?' or Beavis says, 'I may be cool, Beavis, but I can't change the future,' they are sharing MAGA-Socratic insights.

When Trump speaks, he's not only channelling his inner B&BH - especially Beavis - but has the same kind of chutzpatic snigger-snark, butt-kicking delivery. When Butt-Head says after killing a frog, 'That was cool, huh-huh. When we killed the frog, huh-huh, it won't croak again,' a special moronic purity shines through. Ounce for ounce, that trumps wiseass wisdom any day.

So, when the Yellow-Haired Bouffant One exclaims, 'I am the Great Cornholio, I need TP for my bunghole!' I understand him. Hang on. Sorry. That was Beavis after a sugar rush, not Don Don before one.