(From my Facebook page...)
The world is being led to the brink of nuclear war by a
commander-in-chief whose idea of diplomacy is tweeting that his
ICBM-armed opponent is short and fat. If we survive, and if we try to
restore our democratic republic, it may be useful to remember how real
presidents communicate. Here, from 'Commander in Chief,' https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780671663827 Eric Larrabee's excellent study of FDR at war, is a reminder of the importance of presidential utterance:
"A major presidential speech is far more than a speech. It is both a statement and an instrument of executive purpose. Its text will be minutely studied, both at home and abroad, for veiled and buried implications, for hints of omission and carefully calculated turns of phrase, which tell the practiced reader what he wants to know about the government's current cast of mind. Within the administration itself the speech may set a tone, discourage one faction or put another to work, lay down a line of action as firmly as though it were an executive order."
Our current president cannot be understood through "a major presidential speech." His official, scripted speech comprises blather, bluster, boilerplate and untruths. His ideas and the likelihood of his doing one thing or another, "discourag[ing] one faction or putting another to work," are more accurately reflected in the flow of his mendacious, boasting, self-pitying, ignorant, self-contradictory, vicious and inane tweets.
Larrabee describes the exceedingly careful construction of speeches meant to guide the nation's and the world's understanding of U.S. actions and intentions. Today, anxious audiences -- our citizens, our allies and our enemies, the billions of human beings whose prosperity and safety are affected by
U.S.action or inaction -- are reduced to reading 280-character blurts.
Larabee notes, of the old norm, the "the elaborate attention paid to each word, and the importance ... of what stays in and what goes out." He offers, for example, an FDR speech in May 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, when Britain still stood alone against the Nazis, when "it was desirable to avoid provoking either Japan or Russia, to keep one out of the war as long as possible and encourage the other to hold firm if attacked."
The signals FDR sent in this speech had the potential to delay -- or prevent or hasten -- war in the Pacific. Japan must be warned but not antagonized or threatened. A single word could build or erode trust between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.--- like it or not, an essential ally in the European war. "This meant that they could not mention either nation, or use 'dictatorships,' Roosevelt's customary term of opprobrium, but must say only 'Axis,' and it also meant that in a list of countries overrun by aggression, the name of Finland [recently conquered by the Russians], after prolonged consideration, would be dropped."
There was -- and there still is -- tremendous weight on a president's every word.
Today, the weight of most of those words is simply going where weight goes: downward. Every presidential utterance lowers expectations of rational, responsible behavior by the man with the power to paralyze programs that keep children from starving, to foment ethnic and religious hatred, to wreck all efforts to slow global warming, to destroy the world.
The fact that we expect less and less sense -- or even sanity -- from the president does not make his words less dangerous.
(I realize that some may take issue with my raising the question of the president's insanity. It is all too common to hear one president or another labelled stupid or crazy by his detractors, and I don't think George W. Bush's detractors, for example, did the nation any favors by imagining the president to be an idiot. But humanity requires no working definition of "insane" more complex than a president taunting a nuclear-armed, cult-of-personality dictator with playground insults about his appearance.)
The world is a much more dangerous place because this president speaks most honestly -- or at least directly -- on Twitter.
Based on Trump's tweets, what eventualities should a non-1% U.S. citizen expect? What should a prudent foreign head of state prepare for? A strengthened economy or another 2007-09 orgy of profit-taking? International accord or the world's first two-sided nuclear war?
Trump's Twitter stream is an intellectual sewer of aggression, paranoia, hateful prejudice, "alternative facts," patriotic posturing, self-worship and conscienceless greed. There is nothing in it to reassure any citizen or ally that the United States can be trusted to do the right, responsible -- or even sane -- thing.
The world is being led to the brink of nuclear war by a
commander-in-chief whose idea of diplomacy is tweeting that his
ICBM-armed opponent is short and fat. If we survive, and if we try to
restore our democratic republic, it may be useful to remember how real
presidents communicate. Here, from 'Commander in Chief,' https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780671663827 Eric Larrabee's excellent study of FDR at war, is a reminder of the importance of presidential utterance:"A major presidential speech is far more than a speech. It is both a statement and an instrument of executive purpose. Its text will be minutely studied, both at home and abroad, for veiled and buried implications, for hints of omission and carefully calculated turns of phrase, which tell the practiced reader what he wants to know about the government's current cast of mind. Within the administration itself the speech may set a tone, discourage one faction or put another to work, lay down a line of action as firmly as though it were an executive order."
Our current president cannot be understood through "a major presidential speech." His official, scripted speech comprises blather, bluster, boilerplate and untruths. His ideas and the likelihood of his doing one thing or another, "discourag[ing] one faction or putting another to work," are more accurately reflected in the flow of his mendacious, boasting, self-pitying, ignorant, self-contradictory, vicious and inane tweets.
Larrabee describes the exceedingly careful construction of speeches meant to guide the nation's and the world's understanding of U.S. actions and intentions. Today, anxious audiences -- our citizens, our allies and our enemies, the billions of human beings whose prosperity and safety are affected by
U.S.action or inaction -- are reduced to reading 280-character blurts.
Larabee notes, of the old norm, the "the elaborate attention paid to each word, and the importance ... of what stays in and what goes out." He offers, for example, an FDR speech in May 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, when Britain still stood alone against the Nazis, when "it was desirable to avoid provoking either Japan or Russia, to keep one out of the war as long as possible and encourage the other to hold firm if attacked."
The signals FDR sent in this speech had the potential to delay -- or prevent or hasten -- war in the Pacific. Japan must be warned but not antagonized or threatened. A single word could build or erode trust between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.--- like it or not, an essential ally in the European war. "This meant that they could not mention either nation, or use 'dictatorships,' Roosevelt's customary term of opprobrium, but must say only 'Axis,' and it also meant that in a list of countries overrun by aggression, the name of Finland [recently conquered by the Russians], after prolonged consideration, would be dropped."
There was -- and there still is -- tremendous weight on a president's every word.
Today, the weight of most of those words is simply going where weight goes: downward. Every presidential utterance lowers expectations of rational, responsible behavior by the man with the power to paralyze programs that keep children from starving, to foment ethnic and religious hatred, to wreck all efforts to slow global warming, to destroy the world.
The fact that we expect less and less sense -- or even sanity -- from the president does not make his words less dangerous.
(I realize that some may take issue with my raising the question of the president's insanity. It is all too common to hear one president or another labelled stupid or crazy by his detractors, and I don't think George W. Bush's detractors, for example, did the nation any favors by imagining the president to be an idiot. But humanity requires no working definition of "insane" more complex than a president taunting a nuclear-armed, cult-of-personality dictator with playground insults about his appearance.)
The world is a much more dangerous place because this president speaks most honestly -- or at least directly -- on Twitter.
Based on Trump's tweets, what eventualities should a non-1% U.S. citizen expect? What should a prudent foreign head of state prepare for? A strengthened economy or another 2007-09 orgy of profit-taking? International accord or the world's first two-sided nuclear war?
Trump's Twitter stream is an intellectual sewer of aggression, paranoia, hateful prejudice, "alternative facts," patriotic posturing, self-worship and conscienceless greed. There is nothing in it to reassure any citizen or ally that the United States can be trusted to do the right, responsible -- or even sane -- thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment