No Kings, No Tyrants
No more "obliterating" our language
No kings.
No tyrants.
We will not be silenced.
When you get to the core of the problems in our country and the world, you realize, as I have stated before, that our country’s solipsist-in-chief, a title he still holds, is committing an assault on the truth.
And he does so by assaulting, or, one might say, by “obliterating” our language.
In Latin, “obliterate” literally means “against letters” or to erase letters.
As a result, it should have come as no surprise when Trump said years ago that he did not have to read his daily intelligence briefings; he said that he would enlist Mike Pence, then his vice president, to read those briefings for him. Moreover, as we will recall, Trump famously bragged that he did not have to read the intelligence briefings because he is “like a smart person.”
Nor should it have been a surprise when, as we will also recall, that James Mattis, one of Trump’s secretaries of defense in his first term and a former Marine general, wrote of Trump that he is “functionally illiterate.”
Trump, whose neologisms, as I wrote years ago, include “covfefe” and “unpresidented,” has committed an assault on the truth and our language not only with his misspellings or his butchering of “words” that do not exist.
No, that would be to limit his attempted obliteration of the language arts.
No, Trump, the man of letters, has since the beginning tried to obliterate our language with his lies, with his rhetoric of hatred and violence, and with his use of superlatives, as I wrote years ago in many columns.
Let us focus on his use of superlatives in this column.
When you are a writer, you instinctively know or you learn not to use superlatives, except in rare cases, a point that I have made before.
To say, or even worse to write things such as “they will see an attack the likes of which they have never seen before,” is atrocious speech and atrocious writing because it lacks sophistication or nuance. Rarely do we encounter anything in life that is so definitive. In addition, a superlative or extreme speech is almost invariably not true.
We all know that Trump lies, but even an honest person should be wary of using superlatives in his or her writing.
Trump may think he has the “best words,” as he said years ago with no understanding of irony, but what he really has is a need for self-importance as well as a lack of impulse control.
John Bolton said on CNN a few days ago that Trump wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and he thinks he can do so by brokering peace in the Middle East.
Trump has a funny way of trying to broker peace.
One is not likely to secure a lasting peace by dropping bombs on another country and then demanding that such a country surrender.
This is not the first time that Trump has made absurd claims about his ability to bring peace to the world.
Trump’s previous claims that he could end in one day the wars in Gaza and between Russia and Ukraine will always be laughable.
Once again, the solipsist in chief was engaging in superlatives not only because he is a blowhard; he was also doing so because he has no sophistication or wisdom, no impulse control.
Delayed gratification is one of the keys to life.
But Trump wants to be rewarded and rewarded immediately, even though he is the enemy of peace, who is spewing chaos everywhere, and who is trying to “obliterate” the truth.
It is also true, as I have written before, that Trump wants to erase, undo or, again, one might say, “obliterate” the accomplishments of his predecessors in office.
In his first term, Trump tried to unwind NAFTA, an achievement of Bill Clinton’s.
Trump 1.0 removed funding for an early warning program on pandemic preparedness, a program begun by George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama.
And the solipsist-in-chief abrogated the JCPOA, negotiated under President Obama, which froze Iran’s nuclear program in 2015 and subjected Iran to international inspectors and monitoring, an agreement to which Iran was adhering.
More recently, Trump has been gutting the Inflation Reduction Act, a grand achievement under President Joe Biden, by stripping away tax incentives for solar, wind and renewable energy.
In each case, Trump has tried or is trying to “obliterate” the successes of previous presidents of the United States and their administrations.
Some years ago, I alluded to Harold Bloom’s seminal text, The Anxiety of Influence, in which, to be simplistic, the eminent literary critic argued that some writers try to “kill” their poetic father figures.
Of course, the best writers build on the past by creatively misreading their precursors, as Bloom would say.
I don’t expect that Trump will ever read The Anxiety of Influence. Again, we know that Trump is not a reader, because, as he boasted, he is “like a smart person.”
He can characterize himself in any fashion he wants, but I suspect that one of the reasons why Trump is trying to “obliterate” our world is because he does not have the endurance, the commitment, or the empathy, to read anything worthwhile.
To read a book, or even a newspaper article, all the way through takes a degree of character.
You are not going to win a Nobel Prize by trying to obliterate the past and the present and by threatening the future of our planet.
Some of us may not believe in God. Others call God by different names. And different religions regard different texts as holy.
I respect all people who are decent and law-abiding, and I respect all holy texts.
From my perspective, as someone who believes very deeply in God, I have no doubt that God created this planet, and God is the Word.
I cannot imagine that our Creator is happy with the “obliteration” taking place on the planet and in our language.