Above: How AI draws Trump as a scorpion
Watch Out For Words of War We Use
Biden had to apolgize for his "bulls-eye" comment and I had to be careful about the words I used for a Chauncey DeVega Salon column quote.
The words Trump and Biden are now both using are going to be under the microscope lest they are suggestive of violence. For example (from an MSN article)
In an unedited interview that ran in its entirety, a defiant President Joe Biden told NBC News anchor Lester Holt that it was a mistake when he recently said that he wanted to put former President Donald Trump back in "a bullseye," yet did not cave on his criticism of Trump's mean and often violent rhetoric.
Last week, before a comeback performance at a Detroit rally, Biden said to donors, "We're done talking about the debate; it's time to put Trump in a bullseye." Republicans are now accusing the president of stoking violence against his rival following gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks' attempt to kill Trump, who was shot in the ear at a rally on Saturday.
"How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says?" Biden asked Holt, then referring to Trump's reaction while in the White House to the deadly alt-right Unite the Right incident in Charlottesville in 2017. "Do you just not say anything because it may incite somebody?"
Salon columnist Chauncey DeVega asked me for a quote for an article he was writing. You can read the column and my quote here:
DeVega used my reference to "bullets"in it in his title because it couldn't be construed as a call for violence. I pat myself on the back for being so clever.
I orginally considered ending my quote using submarine warfare analogy with writing about how a Commander Biden out to set his sub on the bottom of the ocean for about a week before surfacing to periscope depth, manning the torpedos, and going full speed ahead. Of course this was a reference to the book and movie "Run Silent, Run Deep." I thought that not everyone would get it, but I thought it would work anyway. After all I thought Biden would make a good Clark Gable. He played the commander in the movie. From Wiki, the title refers to "silent running", a submarine stealth tactic. The story describes World War II submarine warfare in the Pacific Ocean, and deals with themes of vengeance, endurance, courage, loyalty, and honor, and how these can be tested during wartime. You can see why I thought to use it as an example.Then I realized that referencing warfare would be going against the call to avoid anything in our rhetoric which could be construed as a allusion to violence.
Political campaigns have always been called fights and the term "a hard fought battle" is part of the lexicon when people write or talk about political campaigns. Now we have to be careful of how people may take our words to be suggestive of violence.
Being cognizant of how the words used to criticize one's own political opponent and by others to make a case against a politician may lead to some people construing this as a call to violence is important. I can't find the word or words to describe how far beyond irony it is that between Trump and Biden, and between far-right Republicans and Democrats, it is that Republicans are the ones who reveled in using infammatory language.
"We could talk about Nancy Pelosi, we could talk about the assassinations of Joint Chiefs, the hangings of Mike Pence. We could go on and on and on. We could talk about it on both sides. Again, a good question to ask about what he said in a private fundraiser — a good question to ask, I would have asked the same question. But to ask that question absent of any context seems to me to be — you talk about a phony moral relativism."
I'd just say it was like comparing apples and aardvarks.
Biden has a dilemma because he must highlight Project 2025 and Trump's dictatorial ambitions as a threat to democracy despite Trump and his campaign trying to say doing so may incite violence.
I'm reminded of all the TV commercials for medications with dire, sometimes life threatening, side effects and adverse reactions. While scenes of happy people in bucolic setting play on the screen with a musical backround a melodious voice reads the required label warning which sometimes end with "and may cause death."
Somehow Biden and his surrogates have to warn about the threat Trump is to democracy by choosing their words very carefully. In fact they may caution against using the words "threat" and "democracy." Instead Biden and other trying to sound the alert about this existential threat might just use specific examples of what Trump, and now Vance, want to do without using any words that would have the Republicans screaming foul.
What can Biden's campaign do? Can they use the fact that JD Vance once said Trump would be America's Hitler in their ads? If anything is inflammatory comparing Trump to Hitler this certainly is. How can Biden say that in many ways Trump has said things could be like Hitler without saying Hitler's name?
Here's a TV discussion about this.
Consider this from 2023:
Former President Donald Trump vowed this weekend to "root out" his political opponents, who he said "live like vermin" as he warned supporters that America's greatest threats come "from within" -- extreme rhetoric that echoes the words of fascist dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, experts and Trump's critics said.
A Trump campaign spokesman dismissed the backlash to his speech, at a Veterans Day rally in New Hampshire, but some historians said the parallels were alarming.
"To call your opponent 'vermin,' to dehumanize them, is to not only open the door but to walk through the door toward the most ghastly kinds of crimes," writer and historian Jon Meacham said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
There's not much that could be more inflammatory than suggesting Trump is like Hitler. Now making this comparison will be (to use a German word) verboten.
Consider some of the words and phrases in political parlance besides "bullseye" that we have think of as warlike or as calling for violence: aim, target, set their sights on, fire at, blast, and even the commonly used word "attack."
Whether Trump and his surrogates can resist employing hysterical hyperbole that the Democrats can point to as promotion of violence remains to be seen. Already some speakers at the convention are demonizing Democrats and coming close to this.
It isn't original to use the scorpion and the frog fable to apply to Trump and how he can't resist expressing his violent thoughts.
A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "I am sorry, but I couldn't resist the urge. It's my character." (Wikipedia)
Of course in the fable both the scorpion and the frog end up drowning. We can only hope that Trump stings himself and that Biden, the frog, who is after all adept at swimming, makes it to shore and recovers from the injection of Trump venom.
Update, HUFFPOST article:
How one must ask can they effectively fear monger by avoiding every word that might incite someone to violence?
You can read this and previous blogs on two websites and on Substack. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.
Read on the WordPress Stressline.org (you can subscrbe to this on the upper left)
or….
Read on the Google Blogger platform HalBrown.org This version has a Disquis comment section which makes it easy to post links and images.
or… Hal’s Substack where you can sing up to get an email when I post a new blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment