(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . How Do We Talk About Trump? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-03 How do I talk about Trump? This is a sincere question. I need help. And not just the types of help that all of my friends have been begging me to get for years. I need help knowing what to say. I think of myself as being pretty facile with the English language. Of course, I also think of myself as exceptionally good-looking and as a three time Wimbledon Champion, so you can decide for yourself how tethered to reality I am. That said, I don’t often find myself at a loss for words. But I am struggling to come up with the right way to explain to voters why they shouldn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2024. Obviously, most voters have already made up their minds. They have either been sentient for the past 7 years witnessing the Trump Zeitgeist and as a result have embraced the “maybe-I’ll-move-to-Greece” zeitgeist. Or, they have fully embosomed the Trump cult and have sworn their fealty to The Donald, immediately before going to dictionary.com to look up what the word “fealty” means. But there is a small sliver of voters who are genuinely undecided and could make the difference in the outcome of a very close election. In my experience these voters tend to be relatively non-ideological and are not obsessive followers of the news. They would rather watch a ballgame or The Bachelor than the irresistible Chris Hays-Rachel Maddow one-two punch. I know. I don’t get it either. I feel I understand the psychology of cinnamon ferrets more than these people. But it is what it is. Because of my long involvement in politics, these undecided voters often ask me who they should vote for in 2024. They know Trump sends “juvenile tweets” but they also know that the price of gas is higher than at some point in the vague past and Joe Biden is beginning to look his age, if his age were 106. So, they come seeking what they perceive to be my wisdom, and therein lies my problem. I don’t know quite what to tell them. Again, these people are not political junkies. They are average folks who want a 30–60 second answer, allowing 2 minutes for follow-up questions. They are not looking for what I really want to give them, which is a 45 minute screaming diatribe paired with occassional and possibly successful attempts to pull their heads off their necks. But trying to explain Donald Trump’s flaws to someone is like trying to catch the amazon river in a Dixie Cup. There is just so much that I almost become paralyzed as all of Trump’s bat-shittery backs up in the pipeline from my brain to my larynx. By the way, not for nothing, I’m told I have a very sexy larynx. I could start talking about Trump launched a violent insurrection to overthrow the results of a democratic election. I could talk about he subverted faith in democracy claiming that every election he ever ran in was “rigged and stolen”. I could talk about him calling for suspending the constitution to keep himself in power, or mocking and degrading our troops or his racist demagogury. I could talk about all of this. But I wouldn’t even be getting started. Perhaps I cold get into his politicization of the Justice Department, or endorsing police brutality, black mailing Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political opponent, or abusing the pardon power, or wanting to give himself the Congressional Medal of Honor. (I bet you forgot that one!) Then there is stealing our nation’s military secrets and showing them to his fans at Mar-a-Lago like he would show off an autograph of Mickey Mantle, or profiting off of the presidency, or his claim that he had dictatorial powers (“…nobody ever likes to talk about Article 2. That says I can do whatever I want”). And let’s not forget family separations, the Muslim travel ban, his catastrophic and insane COVID response (bleach and horse dewormer) and the fact that a jury unanimously found that he’s a rapist. BLAH BLAH BLAH! By now, I would be about 15% of the way through my parade of horribles, and the voter I’m talking to will have already booked, taken, and returned from a trip to Machu Picchu. Clearly, reciting the litany isn’t the most effective tact I could take. It wasn’t always like this. Time was when a single sentence, or even simple phrase could encapsulate an entire case against a candidate. Nixon? He’s a crook. LBJ? Vietnam. Grover Cleveland? “Look, a president should have some idea how many children he has” ‘. But Trump has spent his life showing such contempt for basic norms, like respect for democratic institutions or the rule of law, that no one transgression, no matter how egregious, shocks anyone anymore. It seems that the only approach which might be effective is to come up with a short paragraph that, without reciting a laundry list, distills the case against Trump into one devastating thunderbolt of truth. It must be understandable, it must allow the listener’s brain to connect the dots between what you are saying and what they’ve sort of heard about on the news, It can’t be too abstract or ethereal, and it must pack an emotional, not just an intellectual punch. Coming up with this paragraph is what I imagine homework is like. And it gives me a new sense of respect for my schoolmates who actually did theirs. It’s really hard. But it’s something we all have to work on and circulate so that we can convince the persuadable about the existentially critical nature of this coming election. On the other hand, if we fail and the terracotta tyrant is re-elected, the silver lining will be that coming up with a short, pithy anti-Trump phrase will become much easier. “Enjoying the gulag?” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/3/2197083/-How-Do-We-Talk-About-Trump Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/