Nonsense and Gibberish

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The President of the United States, the person who speaks for our country on the world stage, should possess the ability to communicate verbally, in an intelligent manner, on a wide range of topics.  The President should know what he (or hopefully someday soon, "she") is talking about and have the ability to speak in a clear manner that allows him (or her) to be understood by others.  Our current President falls far short of that mark.

Donald Trump is currently on an authoritarian bender of removing public aid - things like food for hungry children - from  states led by Democrats, and trying to incite public protests in Democratic-led states by sending in agents of his rapidly expanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) force of masked marauders for immigration sweeps.  His current focus is on the large Somali community in Minnesota, a group of people that Trump has referred to as "garbage."

It is not a job requirement for the President to be a great orator, though some like FDR, JFK, and Obama clearly were, but Presidents should at least have the restraint and decency not to call large groups of people "garbage."   US Presidents have never talked that way before, at least not in public, but Trump denigrates an entire class of people - and the press and the public just treat is a normal political speech.  Our silence in the face of such disgusting rhetoric enables Trump to keep right on talking, and with each of his vile outbursts, the standards for presidential speech and public discourse go lower and lower.

Humanity has some rotten apples, "garbage" perhaps, but whole group and classes of perople are not garbage.  The Nazis tried to peddle that bullshit in World War II.  It was wrong then, and its wrong now.  Somalis are not garbage, but Trump's speech clearly is.

With Trump it's more than just his disdain for decency, it's the way he says things.  Trump's lies are so constant and rapid that fact-checking (correcting) him in real time is next to impossible.  His sentences and his thoughts are disjointed, and he jumps from subject to subject faster than fleas can change dogs.  During the last campaign he referred to his rambling and inability to stay on a topic as "the wave," but some observers saw it as a means of covering up for a lack of knowledge in certain areas, or an impulse control issue, or even a sign of cognitive impairment.

The campaign ended more that a year ago, and "the wave' rolls on.

This past Friday there was an exchange between Donald Trump and a reporter that was such a classic Trump-speak, baloney-fest that I chose to preserve it here.  Kaitlan Collins of CNN was  questioning Trump on the impending FBI investigation of the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an ICE agent.  Collins wanted to know if he thought the FBI should share information about their investigation with Minnesota officials, something that would be a standard practice in most similar cases.  Here is how the President of the United States responded:

"Well, normally, I would, but they're crooked officials.  I mean, Minneapolis and Minnesota, what a beautiful place, but it's being destroyed.  It's got an incompetent governor fool.  I mean he's a stupid person, and, uh, it looks like the number could be $19 billion stolen from a lot of people, but largely people from Somalia.  They buy their vote, they vote in a group, they buy their vote.  They sell more Mercedes-Benzes in that area than almost - can you imagine?  You come over with no money and then shortly thereafter you're driving. a Mercedes-Benz.  The whole thing is ridiculous.   They're very corrupt people.  It's a very corrupt state.   I feel that I won Minnesota.  I think I won it all three times.   Nobody's won it for since Richard Nixon won it many, many years ago.  I won it all three times, in my opinion, and it's a corrupt state, and the Republicans ought to get smart and demand voter ID.  They ought to demand, maybe same-day voting and all of the other things that you have to do to have a safe election.  But I won Minnesota three times that I didn't get credit for.  I did so well in that state, every time.  The people were, they were crying.   Every time after.  That's a crooked state.  California is a crooked state.  Many crooked states.  We have a very, very dishonest voting system."

That's not how Presidents talk.  It's not even how normal people talk.  Trump-speak is untethered gibberish and nonsense, yet we - the press and the public - go right on pretending that our naked emperor is fully clothed and we are in safe hands.  His "wave" says otherwise.

(FYI:  Lincoln's eloquent "Gettysburg Address" was only 38 words longer than Trump's diatribe above.  It looks as though mankind may no longer be evolving!)