As someone who’s written political speech for candidates and causes, I know not only the value of language but also the power. The right words can go beyond telling a story, or conveying emotion—they can reach that “responsive chord” that empowers people to act on their most deeply held values and beliefs.
But what if there’s a values and beliefs deficit, in the speaker or the audience? What happens when a politician doesn’t know or care what they’re talking about? And what does a participant in democracy, i.e. a citizen, need to know or care about themselves?
And what does all this have to do with Donald Trump and what’s happening on college campuses?
Let’s start with Doonesbury. This weekend, Garry Trudeau said the quiet part out loud, in vivid color. Addressing the viewer, Doonesbury’s “veteran psychologist” said:
“Someone has to speak for the many mental health experts reluctant to say what all of them believe: Trump has dementia!
Why such a grim diagnosis? Well, everyone forgets a name, but Trump switches out names like “Obama” for “Biden” or “Pelosi” for “Haley.” Repeatedly mixing up people is a classic symptom.
And when he freestyle off the stem of a word? That’s called phonemic paraphasia…other symptoms include slurring, semantic aphasia and tangential speech.”
Trudeau draws some of Trump’s greatesh hishts in the background, like “evangelish," “benefishes,” “renoversh” and “soup pie cane.”
Doonesbury, as usual, gets it right, and so does the Guardian:
Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories…These tangents can be part of a tirade, or they can be what one can only describe as complete nonsense.
That column quotes the New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie, who says “the soft bigotry of low expectations” is letting Trump off the hook:
Because no one expected Trump, in the 2016 election, to speak and behave like a normal candidate, he was held to a lower effective standard than his rivals in both parties. Because no one expected him, during his presidency, to be orderly and responsible, his endless scandals were framed as business as usual. And because no one now expects him to be a responsible political figure with a coherent vision for the country, it’s as if no one blinks an eye when he rants and raves on the campaign trail.
Why is that? Why don’t more people care about what they hear from people and groups looking for votes or support? It may have something to do with the low regard people have for politics and politicians.
Those of us who care about politics believe it can be a way to achieve real change, in fact, it’s the only way. What happens in the three branches of government—the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court—determines whose rights get protected, and whose get taken away.
But thanks to Donald Trump, and the media and political culture that built him, politics looks more like a clown show than a source of inspiration. As I wrote recently in this space, we’ve gone from “ask not what your country can do for you” to “what did you expect” from a system that most people find completely removed from their lives.
I said that in the context of Donald Trump’s trial, where the New York Times’ elegant and insightful Maggie Haberman writes,
“Mr. Trump has treated his own words as disposable commodities, intended for single use, and not necessarily indicative of any deeply held beliefs.”
(That’s much better than the inelegant observation I've made here that while everyone else on the planet formulates the words they speak in their brains, Donald Trump pulls his out of a different part of his body).
I’ve been following the trial through the Times’ live updates, where Maggie Haberman and her colleagues post quotes from witnesses and their own analysis. I saved this exchange from last week. It contains a nugget I didn’t see covered elsewhere—did you?
April 23, 2024, 1:28 p.m. ETApril 23, 2024
Reporting from the courthouse
Pecker says Cohen called him furiously denying that the child in question was Trump's, saying that he offered to take a DNA test and that because he was German-Irish and the woman was Hispanic, it was impossible for the child to be his.
To be clear, Pecker appeared to be saying that Cohen indicated that a child with a Hispanic mother couldn’t be Trump’s.
Trump has often talked about “good genes” and blood lines. While running for president, he has denigrated immigrants from Latin American countries and said undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Now, phrases like “poisoning the blood” have a racist history that Axios explains come straight out of “Mein Kampf,” which according to legend is the only book Donald Trump has ever been known to read. But if Maggie Haberman and I are right, the only thing Trump knows about words like that are that Stephen Miller put them on the teleprompter. He only has the dimmest understanding of what he says. He doesn’t know what words mean, or what they can convey.
Take the phrase, “from the river to the sea.” What if the people marching and chanting that phrase were shouting the “n-word?” What if those words had that much power?
I’m not about to explain middle Eastern politics in this space, even if I did graduate first in my class from Temple B’nai Abraham Hebrew School in South Orange, New Jersey.
But I do know that the situation in Gaza isn’t as black-and-white as it may seem to some college students—not that they’re wrong, not that that they’re right. And that deliberately using the most offensive language possible isn’t a good way to deliver a message.
From the campus encampment to the White House.