Trump's Vagueness
George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" was an interesting read. While I found it slightly difficult to understand and somewhat contradictory at times, I did agree with much of what Orwell had to say about the abuse of language by politicians. More specifically, when I read about the vagueness Orwell has observed in politicians' speech, a particular political figure came into my head: President Donald Trump.
Trump is the master of vague language. He is constantly using euphemisms and unclear phrases to water down his true beliefs. I noticed this in a big way in August 2017 when Trump made a statement to reporters after the white supremacist rally that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia. he said, "I think there is blame on both sides...You had some very bad people in that [white nationalist] group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides." There is a lot to unpack here, and I'm not even going to bother commenting on how wrong it is to refer to people participating in a white supremacist rally as "fine," otherwise this post would go a bit off topic. Instead, let's focus on his ambiguity. He said there is blame on "both sides" but hardly elaborated further on how that is. He called some of the white nationalists "bad people," without addressing the horrible beliefs that they were promoting. And finally, the big bombshell, he refers to some of them as "fine." All of this unclear speech is used to hide the fact that Trump is not a huge fan of people of color. Most of his policies seem to reflect that, yet, he would never say those words aloud.
I have seen Trump do this several more times. In July 2017, when he announced the transgender military ban on Twitter, he justified it by saying that, "Our military...cannot be burdened by the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail." And he, of course, did not go into further detail on these "medical costs" and this "disruption" he thinks transgender people would cause. He instead reduced this announcement that blatantly discriminated against an entire group of people in our country to roughly 200 characters. The saying "actions speak louder than words" could not apply more to Trump, as his words don't seem to say anything at all.
 |
| Probably Trump's thought process when he is about to make another imprecise statement. |
Trump is the master of vague language. He is constantly using euphemisms and unclear phrases to water down his true beliefs. I noticed this in a big way in August 2017 when Trump made a statement to reporters after the white supremacist rally that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia. he said, "I think there is blame on both sides...You had some very bad people in that [white nationalist] group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides." There is a lot to unpack here, and I'm not even going to bother commenting on how wrong it is to refer to people participating in a white supremacist rally as "fine," otherwise this post would go a bit off topic. Instead, let's focus on his ambiguity. He said there is blame on "both sides" but hardly elaborated further on how that is. He called some of the white nationalists "bad people," without addressing the horrible beliefs that they were promoting. And finally, the big bombshell, he refers to some of them as "fine." All of this unclear speech is used to hide the fact that Trump is not a huge fan of people of color. Most of his policies seem to reflect that, yet, he would never say those words aloud.
I have seen Trump do this several more times. In July 2017, when he announced the transgender military ban on Twitter, he justified it by saying that, "Our military...cannot be burdened by the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail." And he, of course, did not go into further detail on these "medical costs" and this "disruption" he thinks transgender people would cause. He instead reduced this announcement that blatantly discriminated against an entire group of people in our country to roughly 200 characters. The saying "actions speak louder than words" could not apply more to Trump, as his words don't seem to say anything at all.
Comments
Post a Comment