‘Still Winning: Why America Went All In on Donald Trump—And Why We Must Do It Again’
To crash the gates of Washington, Donald Trump had to radically upend the way the game of politics is played. He had to start by changing the language.
Donald Trump understood from day one that he could never win the presidency talking the way politicians talk. And he could never win by “acting presidential.”
People came to love his hilarious campaign trail shtick where he stands upright behind the podium and woodenly pretends to “act presidential” as he struts around the stage like a toy soldier, muttering meaningless politically correct bromides. It is a still-hilarious shtick that drives crowds wild. But more important, it demonstrates just how utterly useless it would have been for Donald Trump to run as some kind of normal political candidate.
No, this was a man who was out to crash the gates of Washington. And in order to do that, he had to radically upend the way the game of politics is played. He had to start by changing the language.
Such a change would not be easy. And it certainly would not be popular among politicians firmly ensconced in Washington. The royalty of the American political scene— known variously as “the Establishment” or “the elites” or “swamp creatures”—closely guard the language that is spoken in politics. It is a powerful tool in maintaining their grip on power. And the political press slavishly enforces these rules of language. (If you don’t speak the language, you don’t play the game.)
These people have spent decades establishing this vocabulary and hounding from politics anyone who veers outside the proscribed lines. They are forever culling the herd of politicians for saying things that are stupid, thoughtless, strange, or outside the acceptable range of political orthodoxy. The result of this ever-vigilant speech police is a stilted, meaningless political vocabulary that’s poll tested and riddled with preposterous euphemisms that provide for an infinite number of acceptable phrases that Democrats and Republicans yell back and forth—never actually winning any arguments and not accomplishing anything tangible for the voters they claim to represent.
Speech codes are nothing new. They have been popular among tyrants, despots, and demagogues since the beginning of human politics. Such a speech code was made famous, of course, by George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, published in 1949.
In Orwell’s fictional country of Oceana, the establishment “Inner Party” uses the official language of “Newspeak” to control the lower population of workers. The Inner Party uses all manner of media—two-way telescreens to microphones to spies—to enforce the Newspeak speech codes and report back any “thoughtcrimes” committed by the working proles. […]
The Lexicon of Lunacy
It is chilling to read 1984 today, seven decades after George Orwell published it. His ability to predict how established government authorities would use such “Orwellian” tactics to hold on to power is rivaled only by the ability of America’s Founders to ward off the very same abuses in some of their wisest elements of our Constitution.
In America, obviously, political leaders don’t enforce a “Newspeak” speech code and they certainly do not codify it. They don’t have a name for it at all, because to have a name for it would confirm its very existence. But others—outside the established “Inner Party”—do have terms for it. “Political correctness” is probably the most common description.
I call it the Lexicon of Lunacy.
The list of words, terms, and phrases in the Lexicon of Lunacy runs from the ridiculous to the deadly serious. Take the word “cisgender,” for example. I don’t actually know what it means but I know that we are supposed to use it when we are all tiptoeing around somebody’s severe midlife mental breakdown in which they decide to go under the knife to rearrange the sex organs God gave them.
Come to think of it, this is not at all funny. I feel genuinely sorry for anyone who finds himself, herself, or itself that thoroughly confused and lost in life. The only thing that could be worse would be if politicians decided to take that devastatingly depressing sorrow and weaponize it for political use.
Oh yeah, that has already happened.
So, how about this for an actually funny term from the Lexicon of Lunacy. “Overweight” has become a bad word because we don’t want to “fat shame” or “body shame” anyone. Instead we call the person “under tall.” Or, maybe “height- challenged.” Or “girth-oppressed.”
Those are funny. My children use them against me all the time.
Others are not funny at all.
The fuzzy term “pro-choice,” for instance, is the accepted euphemism for a political stance that favors killing a healthy, live human fetus that is living and developing in its mother’s body. In some cases, the term “pro-choice” can even mean the extermination and dismemberment of a healthy, growing fetus that might even be viable outside the womb. Who on earth hears of such a grisly procedure and thinks of the word “choice”? And, of course, the prefix “pro-”?
Less graphic but devastating in other ways are terms such as “free trade.” “Free trade” has become a mantra for hyperglobalization of the economy in ways that punish American workers, wildly enrich Wall Street and the captains of industry, and obliterate the ideals that have always separated America from the rest of the world.
Some of the best euphemisms, lies, and distortions in the Lexicon of Lunacy deal with illegal immigration. To be crystal clear, “illegal immigration” is when illegal aliens illegally enter our country without permission and illegally attempt to illegally reside and illegally work here.
Now, in the Lexicon of Lunacy, this activity is termed “undocumented.” And it is the only acceptable word to describe illegal aliens who are living illegally in the United States. Some of these illegal aliens illegally overstayed their visas to be living here illegally. Others illegally crossed the border to be living here illegally. Many of these illegal aliens also work in the United States illegally.
But, in our crazy political world, mentioning the word “illegal” in reference to “undocumented” people is considered hateful and even racist.