Words Matter
At some point when we were children we were told that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words would never hurt us. It’s a nice sentiment for toddlers and young children, but anyone that has ever had an argument with a friend, loved one, or even a casual acquaintance knows this to be untrue.
We’ve seen any number of monikers for the ex-president as well. People have found all kinds of creative names and acronyms to avoid saying his name. They do this because he sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. He is just a gigantic lump of vanity or the human form of a black hole. Unfortunately, these are only words too.
At a recent event, he admitted out loud that Joe Biden won the election and he was trying to overturn the election. However, I’m sure he doesn’t see it that way. He will continue to assert that he won while uttering phrases like this that showed that he lost.
Words matter. How we address our friends, neighbors, family members, and those we work with matters. How we speak to people matters. This is why we pay so much attention to our politicians in the first place. We pay attention to not only what they say but how they say it. When those words and the deeds that follow match up then we know we are onto something. On a similar timeline, the ex-president promised to pardon insurrectionists should he be reelected in 2024. Such talk could be seen as idle chat, but it is important to look at his history of pardons while he was in the White House.
Certainly, it wasn’t everyone on the list. Yet, when you look at a alarmingly large number of folks pardoned or commuted you see a pattern. It is a pattern of someone that used the oval office as somewhat of a criminal enterprise. It could credibly be said that no one gets poorer going to Washington. Still, no one has profited from the presidency quite like the last occupant.
In the face of these words, the mantra from the right has been eerily consistent. He didn’t mean it like that. He was just joking. You libs are taking him way too literally. He’s not a politician, so he’s not an artful speaker. He just tells it like it is. Suddenly you look up and they’ve tied themselves in knots trying to explain off something that can’t be excused.
What the former guy knows is that nothing serious is ever going to happen to him. People will talk and there will be investigations and they will find more than enough evidence to charge him, but somehow that won’t happen. It won’t happen because he breaks the law in plain sight. He tells you he’s going to do it. He tells you he’s done it. Surely no criminal would do such a thing.
He also is banking on an over 200 year tradition in this country. Underlings and henchmen go to jail. The principals never do. We don’t throw our political opponents in jail. The whole country would descend into chaos if we did. Chaos is just another word after all. Still, it is a pretty good descriptor of what is going on right now.
You nailed it!
1Actions without consequences leads to a herd mentality like this:
*Hill Rs theme in response to the ex-president’s words was they would back him if he is the 2024 nominee.*
For example, “when asked if he could back Trump again in two years, [TX Senator John] Cornyn said: ‘I will support the nominee of my political party.’ ”
Meanwhile, lower down the R hierarchy, but not unique:
>> Michigan state senate candidate Mike Detmer tells a crowd that he wants citizens to bring guns to polling places: “…if we can’t change the tide, we need to be prepared to lock and load. So you ask, ‘What can we do?’ Show up armed.”
https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/1487907832099848195
https://t.co/LXl259Bw49
Trump’s comments — he would pardon Jan. 6 rioters, the VP could overturn elex and there should be mass protests over his probes — generated variety of reaction from Hill Rs. But there was one constant:
2Trump is The Big Lebowski (not The Dude, the other Lebowski). Republicans are Brandt, the obsequious personal assistant. Republican voters are little achievers, simply a means to an end.
While Lebowski is bellowing and railing on about the bums always losing, Democrats need to take a rug, any rug in the house.
3… Republican politicians are Brandt…
4I agree that trumpf will not face criminal charges. He’s proven it over and over. Part of his plan is to keep saying he’s going to run just to keep that barrier up against any prosecution.
5As I commented yesterday, I’m at the point where I just yawn when he opens his mouth. Nothing ever comes from his wide criminal enterprise except more grifting. He told us he’d get away with murder if he did it in full view on 5th avenue. He’s already proven that to be true. He’s the Teflon don for real.
This does not bode well for our Democracy’s future and that’s no joke. As I’ve said, I’m so concerned for what my kids and grandkids will be dealing with when I’m gone.
Thanks Nick but we are royally screwed. Words matter, it ‘changes brains’. Conservative propaganda, ”Republicans are good, Liberals are bad’, dominates the MSM message. Conservatives have been controlling the message for 50 years. We are seeing a whole generation being brought up on right wing Hate.
Again, thanks Powell Memo! …
” Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media, and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on TV are conservatives. Talk matters because language heard over and over changes brains.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-conservatives-really_b_825504
” Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell’s agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that. [There are many others, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which date from the 1940s.]
And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.
Why haven’t progressives done the same thing?
There’s a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that conservative foundations and progressive foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, ‘Here’s several million dollars, do what you need to do.’ And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system, which I analyzed in “Moral Politics,” has as its highest value preserving and defending the “strict father” system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.”
6https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml
lex@7
The interview with Lakoff cites Frank Luntz as one of the chief architects of the narrative. I saw an article a couple of days ago that Dr. Frankenstein is lamenting the monster that he helped bring to life.
7https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/27/frank-luntz-interview-pollster-us-uk-politics
And then there’s the internet, a great place for bubbles of antifa and free-speechers to gather and talk. And talk. And talk.
8Mark@8
9Thank you, good article! Our Democracy is up against an enormous amount of power, money and influence. But I have hope. People are basically good and there are many good people doing the right thing! That’s why I love this blog, err, professional political organization!
The Orange Slushy only wants two things, 1) to be in the spotlight 2) to get his followers money .
10