Susie Wiles is Donald Trump's chief of staff. She explained the rationale for American air strikes against boats accused of smuggling drugs from Venezuela by saying that Mr Trump "wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle"—a remark that illustrated the administration's misjudgment of its leverage over Nicolás Maduro.
I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.