It’s the message that’s destroying us. Not literally, but it is the message that’s facilitating the break up of families, and causing people to cry about missing their parents or to threaten civil war if their guy doesn’t win.
We’re being broken by “bad” words and sound bytes.
The lack of quality discourse in our country’s politics is a disservice to all of us but particularly voters who notoriously are given and attached to poor information.
Have you noticed how a certain presidential candidate writes his tweets?
Let’s look.
We’re looking at nothing but structure and syntax.
If you think things are expensive now, they will get 100 times WORSE if Kamala gets four years as President. Under her plan, Kamala will implement SOVIET Style Price Controls. She will abolish private health care, and make California's ridiculous tax policies the law of the land,…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2024
This person structures his tweet with an “if you do this, you will suffer 100 times the consequences.” There is no mathematical basis for this number, it’s hyperbole, but hyperbole like that of a teenager. “Mom, If he doesn’t like me, I’ll die 100 times.”
You get it.
Then check the words that are capitalized. Why are they capitalized? Because those are the words that this person wants you to pay attention to. If you ignore that the whole of the tweet is kind of crazy, you might remember “WORSE, SOVIET, EVERY, CASH, TAX, VOTE, TRUMP.” You can imagine these words emblazoned across a billboard, on a sign, or being shouted by a despot trying to fire up his supporters.
It’s kind of weird, and it’s a pattern with this person — one that should alarm you, but not because it means that this wacky prediction might come true. It should alarm you because the person instead of giving you a policy that sets him apart, and explaining how they will be different, is jumping on your fear nerve with abandon. It’s him or it’s annihilation, basically.
If you’re scared enough, it won’t matter if he plans to use the United States to pay his legal bills. Don’t believe me?
Just ask where all your donations have gone (if he’s your guy), and ask the venues that he can no longer use what happened to their payments.
Remember this is your billionaire, and yet he can’t pay his debts.
If common sense and logic apply, he’s not really good at math. Billions of dollars in the bank means, theoretically, your debts should be covered. You’re rich, right?
Now during an election both sides of the spectrum offer somewhat grim pictures of the other side but some try to temper it with data that makes a modicum of sense. For instance, Bill Clinton citing 50 million jobs created under Democratic leadership and only on million under Republican. A real fact.
Or, for instance, a real number of immigrants crossing the border instead of millions of people storming the border, like zombie hordes in scary TV shows.
Can you imagine many millions of folks storming the border in a year? No really, think of the rate of crossing that would be, and explain how this strangely-tinted fellow found the only quiet day on the border to have his press conference. I’m joking, but seriously, where are these millions? He said it.
“They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump said, speaking at a New Hampshire rally. “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
The truth is, again, this person is talking to his supporters using hyperbole.
According to the Customs and Border Protection Agency’s June 20 report, “Since the expiration of the CDC’s Title 42 public health Order on May 12, 2023, to May 31, 2024, DHS has removed or returned over 775,000 individuals, the vast majority of whom crossed the southwest border, including more than 115,000 individual family members. Total removals and returns over the past year exceed removals and returns in any fiscal year since 2010.”
That means, under the current administration, more people were returned across the border than at any time under that guy. So his hyperbole, in this instance, is just a lie. In addition, the agency reported that the rate of border encounters was lower in May than in April, by 9%.
The Southwest border is the main area of crossing but the United States has a northern border which also sees a fair amount of crossings. Mainly the discussions of borders centers only on the Southwestern one that leads to Mexico.
Fear, hyperbole and lies are powerful.
Let’s look at one last tweet.
Kamala Harris: Weak. Failed. Dangerously Liberal. #MAGA2024 pic.twitter.com/PL0DeFss93
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2024
This one comes with a video that includes such hyperbolic hits such as calling for a gun buyback program, “confiscation” and an attention to improving the diet of Americans as “banning meat consumption.” It’s so ridiculous. The whole tweet is ridiculous.
The way the right uses the word "radical" is in itself radical, when to most of us, policies that take care of children, healthcare and old people, seem like common sense.
Too many families have been split up not over guns, not over religion, but over this one person and his insane rhetoric. Based solely on his own language, he's the "radical," and not in any ways that touch logic or common sense.
What we're seeing in his words and his followers is how a malignant narcissist succeeds. but don’t believe what I tell you.
Look up what a narcissist does, and how they desperately need those who will worship them above anything else. It helps them to create and justify their assaults on their perceived “enemies.” Enemies are usually any that don’t like or support the actions of the narcissist. Again, don’t believe me. The information is free and available to everyone.
Breaking the cycle of the narcissist’s spell is the hard road that America is on. The road where this guy's bad words have crept into the fabric of private homes. It's a spell that needs to be broken.
Not breaking the spell risks more families being split because parents would turn their backs on their children for this man, and the children are forced to ignore their parents so they won’t be inundated with bad information and their parents parroting the narcissist’s words. It’s deeper than a deviation of beliefs. It's a split that risks throwing away the nation we've bled to build.
It's a critical rift that needs to be repaired.
We have to move on from "bad words." We have to demand proof, facts, and the exit of wild hyperbole from our leaders' mouths.
