Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Insights from the Trumps
That which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in, and the best of me is diligence. —Shakespeare, King Lear
They were revelations. And they were revealed in the space of three days. And both were a total surprise.
First we learned that eric trump, someone who has often been mocked on Saturday Night Live as being the lesser bulb of the older two, fairly dim bulbed trump sons, is not, in fact, as dull as he is made to appear on the popular show.
On May 15, in a Fox News interview, eric provided insights into the coronavirus pandemic that NOONE else in his daddy’s administration or anyone else in the world, had seen. The entire pandemic thing ALL OVER THE WORLD, he informed the world, is nothing more than a hoax, the goal of which is to help democrats defeat his daddy in November.
Eric’s daddy had, of course, been saying for some weeks that the pandemic would come to an end by the end of 2020, and that a vaccine would be available by then, but he had never suggested that the entire pandemic was nothing more than a scheme to block his reelection. Eric tread in where angels feared to tread, pronouncing the entire thing a “cognizant strategy” that would magically vanish in November following the presidential election. As he explained: “You watch, they’ll milk it every single day between now and November 3. And guess what, after November 3, coronavirus will magically, all of a sudden, go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen.”
Eric’s pronouncement was a slap in the face of Saturday Night Live, and proved once and for all that he is not the dullard he is often portrayed to be. Now all we can do is await his next interview in which he will presumably explain how it is that the democrats have been able to mobilize the entire world to participate in this hoax, and how he will explain the deaths of hundreds of thousands of apparent victims of the virus world-wide as a result of this democratic hoax. Those who have participated in treating and burying the victims of this hoax and those who have lost loved ones, will eagerly await his explanation. Given the brilliance of his first observation about the reason for the promotion of the virus, his second explanation will undoubtedly be equally prescient.
Of even greater surprise than eric’s pronouncement, however, was the news from his father explaining that he is not to be outdone by his son in addressing medical issues.
Two days after eric let the world know that the whole pandemic thing is a hoax, his dad told the world that he is protecting himself from the hoax by taking the anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine. He is taking the drug notwithstanding a lack of evidence that it does any good in protecting the user from the virus, and notwithstanding warnings that it can have serious side effects such as death.
In April an analysis of the medical records of 368 male patients at VA hospitals was conducted. Twenty seven percent of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died, whereas only 11.4 percent of the patients who did not receive the drug died. Although that would suggest to the casual observer that the hydroxychloroquine was not helpful, the trump explained why he was able to ignore that evidence “Here we go, you ready? Here’s my evidence. I get a lot of positive calls about it. The only negative I’ve heard was the study where they gave it-was it the VA with, you know, people that aren’t big Trump fans gave it.” So much for cogent explanations and medical science.
In discussing his decision to take the drug he told some reporters that he “had so many letters” from people who support his use of the drug. He said that: “I want the people of this nation to feel good. I don’t want them being sick. And there’s a very good chance that this has an impact, especially early on.” The trump is not, of course, the only world leader who has been promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine.
President Jair Bolsonaro is the president of Brazil. Brazil is the country that is enduring the greatest suffering of any country in the world as a result of the coronavirus. On May 15, 2020, Brazilian Health Minister, Nelson Teich, resigned from Mr. Bolsonaro’s cabinet. The day before he resigned Brazil had more than 200,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and a total death toll of 13,933. Mr. Teich was the second person to resign from that post within the preceding 30 days. He and his predecessor left their posts because of disagreements with Mr. Bolsonaro over guidelines on reopening state economies within the country, social distancing rules, and because of Mr. Bolsonaro’s insistence that the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus be expanded.
Commenting on Mr. Teich’s departure from the administration, Alessandro Molon, a member of the Brazilian Socialist Party, explained Mr. Bolsonaro’s actions saying: “Bolsonaro does not want a technical minister, he wants someone who agrees with his ideological insanity, like ending social distancing and using chloroquine.” Mr. Molon was not talking about the trump. He could have been.
Considering the beliefs and actions of the two trumps and Mr. Bolsenaro, one can come to only one conclusion: great minds think alike.
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Lying?
“Lying she knew was a sin.”
— Tom Lehrer, An Irish Ballad
When confronted by the need to make significant moral decisions, it can be useful to refer to those of greater wisdom than oneself. That can, we now know, sometimes introduce confusion into what many might have thought was a question that had an easy answer. That was the recent case when considering whether it is OK to lie.
The question is one that all readers of this piece have at one time or another encountered in their lives. It would have seemed, under the circumstances, that the answer in this case would have been easy and not subject to much argument. If for example, a child is confronted with a question from a parent as to the whereabouts of a missing ice cream bar, a child’s untrue response that the child does not know is clearly a lie. But it is not the sort of lie that has grave moral consequences even though a lie, and any follow up would involve minor punishment.
The lie that gave rise to the current dilemma was a lie told not to the parent by the consumer of a purloined ice cream bar, but a lie told to an entity known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And whether or not it is all right to lie to an agency with such an august name and well-deserved reputation for integrity we now know, depends not on what values were instilled in the respondent by a parent, but by which of the two leading newspapers in the country one happens to read.
To make it easier for the reader to juxtapose their quite different answers, and to help the reader arrive at his or her own conclusion, each publication addressed the question on May 8, 2020. That was the day after William Barr, the sycophantic attorney general and trump loyalist, set a new standard for when it is OK to lie and absolved Michael Flynn of any consequences from the twice told lies to the FBI.
On May 8, 2020, the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal announced the new standard. In an editorial cheerily titled: “The Vindication of Michael Flynn” the editorial page editors proclaimed that the absolution of Michael Flynn by the Barr, was “a brave decision that will not be popular with some prosecutors and certainly not with the Democratic media.” What the WSJ happily overlooked in its eagerness to applaud what it viewed as the vindication of a self-admitted felon, was that the felon, twice in open court, admitted that he had lied to the FBI. At his sentencing, and before it occurred to him that the trump or a trump fawning attorney general might come to his rescue, Michael Flynn expressed his remorse for having lied and acknowledged the error of his ways by expressing his hope for redemption, saying: “Through my faith in God I am working to make things right.”
What we now know is that even though God works in mysterious ways, it was not God who helped “make things right.” And making things right did not involve what is commonly known as a “come to Jesus meeting.” All that was needed was a trump-appointed, Attorney General whose eagerness to please his master was more important to him than observing the niceties of the rule of law. God was essentially put in the back seat.
As the trump (whose last encounter with the truth was probably before he even entered the first grade) explained, the Flynn lies were the fault of the Justice Department of the United States and not the fault of the man who lied. As the trump explained, the reason for the exoneration of a convicted liar was not because the liar had not lied but because he was prompted to lie because of the actions of the prosecutors. As the trump explained: “Dirty Cops and Crooked Politicians do not go well together!” He was not indulging in a moment of self-reflection. He was referring to the Justice Department before the advent of the Barr and explaining why the felon Flynn’s forgiveness was justified.
For the reader hoping for somewhat different guidance when addressing the question of lying, it was only necessary to open the editorial page of the New York Times on that same day. Its headline had a slightly different slant from that which appeared in the WSJ. It appealed to those who think words matter. It said: “”Don’t Forget. He pleaded Guilty. Twice.” He not only admitted to lying twice but, as the trump observed at the time he fired the Flynn: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the vice president and the F.B.I.”
Commenting further on Mr. Barr’s action, the Times’ editorial observed that in its filing with the court asking that all charges be dropped, the Justice Department said that it could not prove that Mr. Flynn had in fact made false statements. Apparently, the Justice Department was not privy to the transcript of the hearings that led to Mr. Flynn’s guilty plea in which he acknowledged that he had lied and expressed hope that the real God would help him in the future.
Readers can decide for themselves which editorial sets the standard by which our elected officials should conduct themselves. While deciding I’m sure we all hope that Flynn enjoyed the ice cream bar.
Friday, May 1, 2020
A Trump Tutorial
Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.
— Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
It all arises from a big misunderstanding as to the importance of the emphasis placed on words. Trumpian understanding differs from commonly accepted wisdom and that challenges us all to come to a better understanding of how sarcasm works. Our tutor in that exercise, as in so many things, has been the master of language and, coincidentally, the president of the United States-the trump.
Those of us who are slavishly wed to dictionary definitions are at a disadvantage when we are confronted by the trumpian use of language and discover that it is more sophisticated than the run of the mill usage to which we are accustomed. The most recent example is our failure to understand sarcasm as used by the trump. To the uninitiated, a group to which many of us belong, we thought that the endless procession of untruths flowing from the presidential mouth were misstatements of fact or simply lies. We now have been informed by their author that some of those seemingly false statements were not in fact misstatements of fact or lies, but examples of presidential sarcasm. Since many of us were accustomed to sarcasm being distinguished from factual statements by the inflection with which the words were delivered, the trump’s recent explanations have broadened our understanding of the genre.
Before addressing these trumpian tutorials, we should note that the trump is not the first president to use sarcasm when making public pronouncements. Two come to mind, and whether or not the presidents were being sarcastic or making a point, depended entirely on the inflection used by the presidential speaker when making the utterance.
During a press conference in 1973, when responding to a reporter, Mr. Nixon said: “[P]eople have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” There are two ways in which the last sentence could be uttered. One is the one Nixon intended in which the statement is made decisively and emphatically. Had Nixon intended it as sarcasm he would have added a lyrical quality to the pronouncement thus making it obvious that in saying he was not a crook he was being sarcastic.
The next example of a presidential statement that offered the possibility of being factual or sarcastic came from Bill Clinton. The statement was “I didn’t have sex with that woman.” By emphasizing the word “didn’t” when making the statement, President Clinton was making an unequivocal statement of denial. Had he instead emphasized the word “that” and dragged out the word, his comment would have come across as not only denigrating the woman but introducing sarcasm into his response.
When speaking publicly the trump invariably peppers his speech with bald faced lies and those do not qualify as sarcasm. They are simply lies. He knows, however, that the occasional misstatement that on its face causes him to appear stupider than he actually is, can be described as sarcasm thus infusing it with wisdom and meaning and causing those who fail to realize the satirical nature of the comment, to be greater fools than he. He does not, however, rely on the tone of voice in being sarcastic. He relies on the wisdom of the listener to distinguish between sarcasm and stupidity or prevarication. The corona virus gave him two excellent opportunities to indulge his particular style of sarcasm-one oral and the other written.
The first was during his daily self-adulation briefing conducted on April 23d. In that briefing he extolled the virtue of injecting toxic substances into the blood stream or swallowing them in order to cure the infection inflicted by the corona virus. Those suggestions were, of course, recognized by all listeners as being utter nonsense and caused commentators the world over to comment on what appeared to be yet another example of presidential prevarication or stupidity. What the critics missed, and what the trump had to later explain, was that the suggestion was made sarcastically. The trump knew that the mere utterance of such a stupid idea would immediately be recognized by the sophisticated listener as being sarcastic He did not realize that many listeners rely on inflection used by a speaker when imparting sarcastic comment and thought he was making a serious, and not surprisingly, stupid suggestion.
The trump has now removed inflection as a guiding principle in identifying sarcasm and that brings us to the second example. That occurred when he lashed out at members of the news media whom he holds in contempt since they are constantly pointing out the difference between trumpian fact and everyone else’s fiction. This sarcasm was imparted by tweet. There was no tonal quality to permit the listener to understand the sarcastic nature of the comment. In the tweet he said that reporters who had covered Russian interference in the 2016 election should return their “noble” prizes and that the “Noble Committee” should rescind the awards. Of course there is no such thing as a Noble Prize and the trump was being sarcastic in making such a reference, denigrating both the recipients of the award and the Nobel Committee that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. Since the sarcasm was delivered in the form of a tweet, there was no way that the sarcastic nature of the comment could be imparted by the inflection in the trump voice. Perhaps Jared Kushner, a man of many talents, will let his father in law know that sarcasm works better when spoken than when tweeted. That could be his greatest service to his father-in-law. It would also be a great service to those of us who are apt to confuse presidential prevarication with presidential sarcasm and thus react inappropriately to presidential pronouncements.