"The President"

It galls me when journalists refer to Trump as “the president.” I don’t hold it against the journalists; I understand protocol requires it of them, but it still galls me. I would feel the same way to hear Ted Bundy referred to as “the gentleman,” as in “The gentleman invited the young woman to go for a walk.”

 It’s disconcertingly wrong.

 Reporters have been referring to “the president” quite a lot lately because Trump has been careening between stupefied inaction and inflammatory provocation as he glares impotently at our three crises: the coronavirus pandemic, the economic collapse, and the righteous anger against racist police brutality.

 We desperately need moral and competent leadership now, but what we’re getting is “the president” thrashing recklessly about trying with all his might to figure out how to get re-elected. His latest gesture was a bizarre attempt to portray himself as a strong, in-control leader and devout Christian by siccing law enforcement personnel on peaceful  protestors, driving them off so he could saunter over to a church and hold up a bible for a photo-op. I don’t believe I’m the only one who noticed that he handled the bible awkwardly, the way a Neanderthal might handle an iPad.

 If only he had read “Two Corinthians,” he might have better understood how genuine Christians treat the embodied scripture.

 There are so many important things about America that “the president” doesn’t understand. We have a constitution. It guarantees the right of citizens to peaceably assemble. It relies on a free press to make transparent the actions of the government. It has suffered the bleeding wound of racial prejudice for over 400 years and has seen good people struggling tirelessly to heal that wound.

 On this last point, we can’t forget that “the president” himself has contributed to racial hatred. Most of us remember him including white supremacists in his reference to “very fine people” in Charlottesville back in 2017. Fewer, perhaps, remember that John McCain withdrew his endorsement of Trump in 2016 because of Trump’s racist claim that the Central Park Five were guilty, even though their sentences had been overturned. And on and on.

 The cruel and horrific murder of George Floyd was the trigger that provoked nationwide protests against the routine brutality inflicted by racist police on African-Americans. Seeing Mr. Floyd’s family members on television speaking tearfully about the love they have for their murdered kinsman has brought many of us - ordinary people endowed with a capacity for empathy - to tears. 

 But what about “the president?” Not only does he seem unconcerned about Mr. Floyd’s death, he acts as though the real death he seeks is that of American democracy, with its bothersome constitution, free press, and contested elections. 

 What we long for today is a leader in the White House who understands and sympathizes with George Floyd and the multitude of other victims of racist brutality, a leader who represents our nation with dignity, and who wants to preserve, not kill, our democratic institutions.

 “The president” is not that leader.

Memorial Day 2020

Two of my great-great-grandfathers served the Union during the Civil War. In fact, I inherited a carbine that I believe was used by one of them, most likely by Private Patrick Flynn of the 2^nd New York Cavalry. Today is a day for remembering the fallen from our nation’s wars and, though neither Private Flynn nor Private Jacob Gorth (18^th Indiana Infantry) lost their lives during their service, the former was apparently wounded during the Gettysburg campaign. In fact, as I wrote in a July 2010 post, Private Flynn may have actually won the war for the Union.

In that post, inspired by a spirit of fun, I made light of cavalryman Flynn’s Gettysburg service, and I think – though I don’t exactly owe him an apology – that I do feel I shouldn’t fail to keep in mind the sacrifices he made for the Union’s cause. These sacrifices deserve more than the short shrift I gave him in my July 2010 blog. At the time I found it amusing that he was honored for his service at Gettysburg when, as I discovered, he never actually saw action on that storied battlefield.

This somewhat more serious regard for my ancestors’ Civil War service comes about because I learned that Private Flynn missed Gettysburg probably because he was wounded in a cavalry clash against Jeb Stuart’s rebels in June of 1863 just as Robert E. Lee was leading his army out of Virginia toward Pennsylvania. On top of this, I recently read five different diary-like accounts of Civil War veterans, one of which, Three Years in the Federal Cavalry, was actually about Private Flynn’s regiment. Reading about the experiences of these veterans has imbued me with a new respect for what they went through – all-around hardship, lousy food, lousy clothing (riddled with actual lice), sleeping in the rain, slogging through muddy, barely passable roads, and, of course, the frightening bloodshed of battle. I made a point to read both Yankee and Rebel accounts, but I naturally feel greater connection with the former, given that they were not defending slavery and they were, very much, fighting for us, the Americans of today.

So, hats off to you both, Privates Flynn and Gorth.

Hats off also to two of my most worthy Orlando-area neighbors, Major Dan Mullally of the U.S. Marines and Lt. General Mark Hertling of the U.S. Army, both now retired. Dan, who was kind enough to speak to my Vietnam War class, had led a company of marines at Khe Sanh just after the 1968 Tet offensive had subsided. He has said that one of his proudest achievements was bringing all of his marines home alive despite having led them during one of the hottest periods of combat in the Vietnam War. General Hertling’s many years of service included enough combat to teach any veteran humility and sobriety about the reality of going to war. He has recently served as a commentator on CNN and sometimes offers his thoughtful and informed opinions on that network’s website.

So, to all our good veterans, men and women who have served with courage and distinction, please know that you are not forgotten, and your service does not go unappreciated. Even today, 155 years after the fact, I have nothing but admiration and gratitude for what Privates Flynn and Gorth endured.

Jacob Gorth (aka Goerth), post-Civil War, when he rode with Buffalo Bill out west.

On Girding against Trumpspeak

On his CNN show, Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter patrols the media landscape by identifying outright dishonesty as well as “spin” in its more malicious and slickly misleading forms. On last Sunday’s program he encouraged us not to get so acclimated to the lying which characterizes the current White House that we grow numb to it. There’s a danger in simply accepting outrageous lies as normal; the threat is that we may permanently lose our ability to distinguish integrity from treachery.

 The problem is, or at least one of the problems is, that President Trump has no particular interest in telling the truth. I’m not claiming that everything Trump says is a lie; I’m simply saying he doesn’t care whether what he says is a lie or not. He only cares that his words juice up his base or stoke admiration in the general public. Trump does tell the truth sometimes, but only by accident, when the truth happens to align with his self-aggrandizement obsession.

 So how do we prevent ourselves from being numbed by Trump’s constant spewing of self-serving flimflammery? One way would be to identify the key words he customarily employs to purvey his prevarications and inoculate ourselves against them by mentally substituting more accurate words for the ones he uses. For example, Trump often deploys the phrase “I will say this…” when he is about to tell a whopper. What we might do when he says, “I will say this,” is train ourselves to hear “I will bullshit you about this…”

 A well-known example of this occurred in July of 2018 when, at a press conference in Helsinki, Trump tried to claim Russia hadn’t interfered in the 2016 election, saying, “I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be [Russia].” What bullshit-sensitive listeners should hear in such cases is “I will now bullshit you about this: I don’t see any reason why it would be Russia.”*

 In linguistics, phrases like “I will say this” are called discourse markers. Another discourse marker that Trump commonly uses to introduce unbelievable lies is “Believe me,” as in the following examples:

 On the Paris Agreement – designed to stave off climate catastrophe, “Believe me, this is not what we need.”

 And:

 “I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me.”

 For the record, Trump, I don’t believe you.

 To be fair, Trump sometimes actually tells the truth when he makes a “Believe me” statement, but usually he does not. So that’s one that has to be judged on a case-by-case basis.

 But there are Trumpian discourse markers that are more reliably “lleno de caca,” as they say in Oaxaca. One of these is “People say…” When Trumps says, “People say…” what you should hear is “I’m foisting some bullshit on you here by trying to make you think lots of other people are buying it.”

 During the 2016 campaign he tweeted, “Many people are saying that the Iranians killed the scientist who helped the U.S. because of Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails,”

 The actual number of people saying that was one: Donald J. Trump.

 According to the LA Times, Trumpspeak has infiltrated our language to such an extent that the “People say…” trick may be going viral. For example, a Texas band tweeted: “Many people are saying our next album will heal the sick and end all war. It’s just what many people are saying.”

 Let me conclude by offering a few more substitute phrases that I recommend for girding yourself against the numbness that threatens us from the White House falsehood factory.

 When Trump says “Fake news” you should hear “News that reveals my incompetence or corruption.”

 For “Hoax” substitute “A problem or crisis that I can’t handle.”

 For “Witch hunt,” read “Legitimate investigation into my criminal shenanigans.”

 When Trumps says “Deep state,” think “Democratic institutions.”

 For “Failing” substitute “Succeeding in a way that pisses me off,” as in, “The failing New York Times…” Let’s pause here to point out that New York Times subscriptions surged in the wake of Trump’s election, and 2019 was a record year for this particular “failing” paper.

 My humble proposal is that if we develop the habit of replacing his endless dribble of lies with our own edited truthified versions, we may help ourselves stay mentally alert and avoid the trap, indicated by Mr. Stelter, of growing numb to his constant duplicity. And speaking of Mr. Stelter, let me take this opportunity to plug Hoax, his forthcoming book on this topic:

 

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*In the Helsinki case, Trump’s lie was so blatantly obvious that he had to tell a second lie to cover his original lie, which he did by later claiming to have meant “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be Russia.” [Editor’s note: What a lame-brained loser.]