By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Vinnie Daniel: How come you don’t hate this guy? He is everything you taught us not to trust. Mark Baum: I can’t hate him. He is so transparent in his self interest that I kind of respect him.— The Big Short
Readers, I apologize. Given the headline, you have every right to the expectation that I’m going to pull on my yellow waders and do a close reading of Trump’s acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention. Unfortunately, Biden’s defenestration blotted out the sun — and sucked up all my time — and so I’ve had to scale back my ambitions. I’m sure I’ll have a chance to take up these themes again!
In this scaled back version, I will first look at “word clouds” for three of Trump’s speeches, showing consistent themes, but also differences. Then, I will consider the question of whether Trump might morph from a “Heel” to a “Face.” Finally, I will quote and analyze, in a cursory fashion, Trump on his own attempted assassination, and Trump’s appeal to the working class. I’ll conclude with a few brief remarks on the Trump and Biden Administrations. (Topics from Trump’s speech that I will not cover include war, energy, inflation, and the border, although these comprised the great bulk of the speech’s bulky verbiage.)
Trump: “People” and “Country”
Here are three world clouds (all made with WordCloud+): Trump in Bangor, Trump in Vegas, and Trump at the RNC:
Figure 1: 2016 (Bangor Cross Arena)
Figure 2: 2024 (Vegas)
Figure 3: 2024 (RNC Acceptance Speech)
As you can see, “people” and “country” — appropriately for a populist — have been Trump’s dominant themes for the last eight years, “our country,” or “this beautiful country” being a sort of counterpoint to the Democrat “our democracy.”
Of course, three speeches is a very small sample, and it would be fun to create a bigger one, but accepting that word counts can be said to be proxies for themes, here is a different look at the these world clouds data in tabular form:
In Bangor, after the top two, “people” and “country,” top themes were “jobs” and “trade,” appropriate to the state of Maine, but also (to the best of my recollection) themes of the entire campaign as well. In Vegas, again after “people” and “country,” we had a full-fledged Schmittian “friend/enemy” discourse (“they’re”/”we’re”) along the “border.” And at the RNC, “great” enters the top ranking, presumably because the “G” in MAGA stands for “Great.” But we also have “administration” — presumably to compare Trump’s to Biden’s — but also, and very strangely, “love” (of which more later). Let us now turn to Thomas Crooks’ attempt on Trump’s life:
Trump: The Assassination Attempt
In a remarkable year, one of the more remarkable events has been a Presidential candidate describing how it feels to almost be assassinated, and at his own nominating convention. I can’t think of an equivalent example[1]. Trump is not terse, so I’m going to edit this down seriously, eliminating the jazzy riffing and repetition, but hopefully you will get the flavor:
Let me begin this evening by expressing my gratitude to the American people for your outpouring of love and support following the assassination attempt at my rally on Saturday. As you already know, the assassin’s bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life. So many people have asked me what happened. Tell us what happened. Please. And therefore, I will tell you exactly what happened, and you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell.
Trump leads with this; I’ve spoken to people who watched it, and “remarkable” was also their word. “I will tell you exactly what happened” is so simple and direct. And we’ll see if he keeps his promise:
It was a warm, beautiful day in the early evening in Butler Township in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania….
I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear.
I said to myself, wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet and moved my right hand to my ear, brought it down. My hand was covered with blood….
Service agents rushed to the stage, and they really did. They rushed to the stage.
These are great people at great risk, I will tell you. And pounced on top of me so that I would be protected. There was blood pouring everywhere, and yet in a certain way I felt very safe because I had God on my side. I felt that.
“I felt that” is also simple and direct. More:
The most incredible aspect of what took place on that terrible evening in the fading sun [indeed, 6:11 p.m. ET] was actually seen later. In almost all cases, as you probably know, and when even a single bullet is fired, just a single bullet. And we had many bullets that were being fired, crowds run for the exits or stampede, but not in this case. It was very unusual.
It’s as if Trump lifts the crowd up, and shows it to itself in a mirror. More:
Nobody ran, and by not stampeding, many lives were saved. But that isn’t the reason that they didn’t move. The reason is that they knew I was in very serious trouble. They saw it. They saw me go down. They saw the blood and thought, actually, most did that I was dead. They knew it was a shot to the head. They saw the blood.[2]
We don’t actually know that people thought Trump was dead. But it’s certainly plausible. And now the part that will get some voters, at least, to walk over broken glass to get to the polls to vote for him:
I’m not supposed to be here tonight. Not supposed to be here… I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.
And watching the reports over the last few days, many people say it was a providential moment. Probably was.
And the “iconic” moment. Trump, with the Secret Service agents huddled over him, protecting him with their bodies, looks out and sees the crowd:
When I rose surrounded by secret service, the crowd was confused because they thought I was dead. And there was great, great sorrow. I could see that on their faces as I looked out.
They didn’t know I was looking out [i.e., their reactions were not fake, something Trump is probably not used to]. They thought it was over, but I could see it. I wanted to do something to let them know I was okay. I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting and started shouting, fight, fight, fight!
Once my clenched fist went up, and it was high into the air. You’ve all seen that. The crowd realized I was okay and roared with pride for our country like no crowd I have ever heard before.
I think “pride for our country” transitions back to a more normal campaign mode; but what an extraordinary narrative. I don’t ever want to hear a similar narrative from another politician, but it’s hard for me to imagine another politician carrying the crowd with him as Trump did, whether in Butler, PA, or Milwaukee, WI.
Trump: Heel or Face?
The “Heel” and “Face” dichotomy derives from the art of kayfabe in the world of professional wrestling, a world in which Trump has moved (and may still move)[3]. From WikiPedia:
In professional wrestling, kayfabe (/ˈkeɪfeɪb/) is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as “real” or “true”, specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not staged. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this “reality” within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.
Very much like politics. In these staged events, wrestlers assume characters:
The characters assumed by wrestlers can be distinguished into two alignments: faces and heels.
Faces, short for “babyfaces”, are hero-type characters whose personalities are crafted to elicit the support of the audience through traits such as humility, patriotism, a hard-working nature, determination, and reciprocal love of the crowd. Faces usually win their matches on the basis of their technical skills and are sometimes portrayed as underdogs to enhance the story.
Heels are villainous or antagonistic characters, whose personalities are crafted to elicit a negative response from the audience. They often embrace traditionally negative traits such as narcissism, egomania, unprompted rage, sadism, and general bitterness.
Above, I drew attention to Trump’s use of the word “love”; new for him, at least for this tiny sample. Here are WordCloud+’s usage examples of “love” in Trump’s RNC accepance speech:
The centrality of love is something a Face would extol, especially the Ultimate Face, Jesus of Nazareth. And so Trump, misquoting John 15:13 (to good effect: “others” for “friends”): “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for others.” Trump even gives a shout-out to Fred Trump, the worst father in the world, who “used to love taking me to see Billy Graham.” Of course, there is Hannibal Lector (“he’s love to have you for dinner”). However, most of the usage examples involve kayfabe’s “reciprocal love of the crowd” (“there’s great love in the room”). I myself wouldn’t classify that as love at all; it reminds me of the parasocial relations that K-Pop fans have with their favored artists (or, for that matter, Beatlemania). I’d be even more concerned if “love” interpreted in this latter sense turned into a binding force among “committed nationalist militants.”
Trump: The Working Class
Trump’s acceptance speech contains two passages of direct interest to the working class. The first is “tips,” typically framed as a narrative:
At the center of our plan for economic relief, our massive tax cuts for workers that include something else that stood out to be very popular, actually, here, it’s very popular in this building and all those hotels that I saw that are so nice. I’m staying in a nice one. It’s called no tax on tips, no tax on no tax on tips.
I got that by having dinner recently in Nevada, where we’re leading by about 14 points.
We’re having dinner at a beautiful restaurant in the Trump Building on the strip, and it’s a great building. And the waitress comes over. How’s everything going? Really nice person. How’s everything? Oh, Sarah. So tough. The government’s after me all the time on tips, tips, tips. I said, well, they give you a cash, would they be able to find me? She said, actually, they didn’t know that.
Here Trump plays both parts in a conversation, which he does quite a bit. More:
She said very little cash is given. It’s all put right on the check. And they come in and they take so much of our money, it’s just ridiculous. And they don’t believe anything we say and they’ve just tired, as you know, 88,000 agents to go after them. Even more.
And I said, this shows the level of, you know, most people go out, they hire consultants, they pay millions of dollars. But I said to her, let me just ask you a question. Would you be happy if you had no tax and tip? She said, what a great idea. I got my information from a very smart waitress. That’s better than spending millions of dollars.
And everybody, everybody loves it. Waitresses and caddies and drivers and everybody’s a large, large group of people that are being really hurt badly. They make money. Let them keep their money.
(I haven’t checked to see if there really is a “Sarah.”) Notice that Trump slams the PMC (“consultants”) and upholds the working class (“very smart waitress”). At a policy level, I’m not sure I want to encourage nobles throwing gold coins to the peasants as they pass by in their carriages any more than they already do, but there’s no denying that “more money in your pocket” has its own appeal.
And on globalization and unions:
And right now, as we speak, large factories just started are being built across the border in Mexico. So with all the other things happening on our border, and they’re being built by China to make cars and to sell them into our country. No tax, no anything. The United Auto Workers ought to be ashamed for allowing this to happen. And the leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately. And every single auto worker union and non union should be voting for Donald Trump, because we’re going to bring back car manufacturing and we’re going to bring it back fast.
They’re building some of the largest auto plants anywhere in the world. Think of it, in the world. And we’re going to bring it back. We’re going to make them we don’t mind the we don’t mind that happening. But those plants are going to be built in the United States. And our people are going to man those plant.
And if they don’t agree with us, we’ll put a tariff of approximately 100 to 200% on each car, and they will be unsellable in the United States.
We still have to built our own plants here, of course. But nevertheless!
Conclusion
One recent talking point from Democrats has been that the Republicans geared their whole campaign around Biden’s age. There’s no sign of that in this speec. Trump remarks:
They will not have done the damage that Biden has done, only going to use the term once. Biden. I’m not going to use the name anymore. Just one time.
Biden, or rather whichever Biden staffer is, or possibly was, in charge of his account, reacted to Trump’s acceptance speech as follows:
I’m stuck at home with COVID, so I had the distinct misfortune of watching Donald Trump’s speech to the RNC.
What the hell was he talking about?
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 20, 2024
And I think “What the hell was he talking about?” is a fair reaction, especially if you’ve got West Wing brain and conceive of a Presidential as a well-crafted script of policy talking points and the occasional clever aphorism. I’m still struggling through breaking down Trump’s rhetoric, because quite frankly I’m a big fan of terse, especially in others, but it seems to me that what Trump is all about is the relationship to a crowd, an actual, visible, tangible crowd. There, Trump is in his element, and everything he says — jazzy riffing, digressions, verbal oddities, religiosity, and all — is designed to maintain that connection. Very much unlike all other politicians in the field today.
NOTES
[1] In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was shot while giving a speech and, also remarkably, continued on speaking. But he didn’t describe the shooting in the speech, let alone an acceptance speech.
[2] I cut this part out for brevity: “And there’s an interesting statistic. The ears are the bloodiest part. If something happens with the ears, they bleed more than any other part of the body. For whatever reason. The doctors told me that. They said, why is there so much blood? He said, it’s the ears. They bleed more. So we learned something, but they just, they just, this beautiful crowd, they didn’t want to leave me. They knew I was in trouble. They didn’t want to leave me. And you can see that love written all over their faces.” “So we learned something.”
[3] Needless to say, “I don’t love Trump.” I’m looking at his work as an exercise in rhetoric. When I say “simple and direct,” for example, I’m not saying true; the most I might say is “plausible.” For all I know, to Trump the showman, the story of his assassination is genuine imitation kayfabe all the way down (I, for example, have been spoken to about mediating serious emotional events through literature, as opposed to direct and genuine feeling, whatever that may be).
[4] Interestingly, in kayfabe the crowd can also be a “pseudo-character”: “In the WWE Universe era, the crowd also can be spontaneously used, mostly as a Heel, either to distract promo, build more heat to heels, or used to distract referees on their count-outs to force a result, even when they have no physical power or rights to fight the wrestlers.” Trump, however, makes the crowd in Butler, PA a Face.
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“So we learned something.”
Looking forward to four more years of verbal diarrhea.
About not taxing the tips, if I add a markup to a job, doesn’t that count as a tip, and shouldn’t it also not be taxed? Or is that totally completely not the same difference.
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There’s a federal law that enforces taxes on tips. Dates to the Reagan administration. Prior they went unreported. Real enforcement didn’t start until a later law that I can’t recall. I think in the second Clinton term. Try a few searches. I’m sure you can find something on the Internet, it’s filled with interesting information and laws and government sites and whatnot.
Trump was giving a sermon to the faithful and since I’m not that I turned it off. When I turned it back on an hour later darned if he wasn’t still talking.
But while I found the opener including kissing the dead man’s hat a little annoying, it occurs to me that many felt the opposite and Trump, crude but no fool when it comes to politics, was both calculating (the little girl on his lap) and sincere in his convention and sermon. After all he’s a salesman and supposedly the first rule of convincing sales pitches is that you have to believe in your own product.
In other words plenty of people watch Trump and can’t stand him but plenty of others love the guy. It’s that love that the TDS no doubt find scary. But Hitler had the Prussian military tradition and the arms of Krupp backing him up. Trump has a lot of overweight people in T-shirts. The Russiagate fanatics on the other hand do seem scary and have spooks and militarists on their side. If it’s the inept versus the insincere inept seems the better bet.
> Trump, crude but no fool when it comes to politics
Trump has dominated US politics since 2016. He reshaped the Republican Party.
Trump’s political (and rhetorical) skills are, therefore, unquestionable. But they are off the spectrum for political figures generally (compare Obama, let alone Clinton). So some might feel it’s important to understand what his skills are and how they work, instead of simply reacting (even if reactance is easy, fun, reinforced socially, and so forth).
I had just read the Bloomberg Trump interview when I watched a half hour of Trumps speech.
It’d be interesting and entertaining to see him morph heel to face, but then I saw his (formerly known as tweets) on the Biden defenestration and beatification of Kamala…
This is the stupidest timeline and he’s been the heel since he started kayfabery, it’s still possible he could make the transition, but then we’d be in a parallel universe.
Perhaps he’ll do “A/B testing” and see how it plays with different audiences.
I think “public spirited” might appeal to people who don’t have strong prior partisan commitments, but he may not need that to win, and it might not be as much fun to be (or to act) that way.
I think you are on to something. The base might love Trump the heel, but to gain a larger share outside the base the face apporach might be better. But is it as fun?
Recently listened to the Due Dissidence podcast about the speach. They found it dull and thought the audience reaction was pretty muted (and they have been to some Trump speeches, or at least one in New York that they reported from).
Maybe all the best material is as a heel? If so, will Trump who loves to perform in front of audiences be able to stay a face?
Re: Trump and Wrestling
If you want a pretty funny comparison, look at the shots of Trump’s face lit up while Hulk Hogan was cutting his promo at the RNC vs. when Vance was delivering his speech.
In a lot of respects, Trump’s politics does mimmick the art of crowd work in wrestling.
Yeah, don’t get me wrong, with what he said in the Bloomberg interview and his demeanor in this rambling speech to his elect, I’d really love to see him redeem himself.
I’ve been in the room with him a few times and a very, very, very long elevator ride once in which I saw what is a true social genius in him: if that was brought to bear on the real problems of dull normals like myself, he’d be a transformative politician.
I can’t rule it out yet, but it feels like dreaming of a parallel universe.
He did seem a little bored with the charade, but that doesn’t explain why he didn’t cut it short. Been a while since he had such a large captive audience ? He may decide to run the gov. from Mar A Lago this time to keep up with his golf. Would entertain him if everyone has to visit his court to kiss hands to get anything done.
If Ms Harris fails to launch foreign dignitaries will probably start to visit quite early and the US gov. could be in lame duck status as early as September which is a long time from January next year.
I’ve heard he was subdued, spec that the shot coming so close has had a lasting effect. Makes him realize he’s taking some risk running for pres. Good to give a shout out for god, quite a few still ready to go with his pick.
Seems Biden might have hoped not too sharp ss people might let somebody thru, which they did. If aim was better I assume Biden would still be in.
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(wash, rinse, repeat)
He sat through the entire convention, something no candidate has ever done, in at least the post WWII era. They normally act like movie stars, come in for their scene, and leave. Trump presumably was trying to show appreciation by doing something so out of paradigm.
I would be exhausted by that. The fact that he had enough energy for a 90 min performance of any sort is pretty good in light of that.
Agreed, although it’s arguable that if he had had to listen to his own speech he’d have fallen asleep… it was an hour too long. Still, his endurance skills both during both campaigns and during his WH years was impressive and atypical. He can out last most people half his age, including the WH press corps, which he regularly bested during his press conferences. It hardly matters what comes out of his mouth.
And all this on a MacDonald’s diet. Go figure…
In EU politics, where Council decisions in the most contested matters are often done after midnight, stamina is crucial.
I have forgotten which PM or president it was that ate butter sticks when meetings dragged on, to keep up the energy. Maybe it was Helmuth Kohl?
Trump getting some burgers would fit right in.
He’s the exception to the rule, like that great aunt that smokes 3 packs a day and lives to be 102.
Trump calling out the UAW, when Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters spoke at the convention, is interesting. IDK if there’s any sort of UAW vs. Teamsters animosity, but maybe punching the UAW and not mentioning the Teamsters seemed like a safe way to go. If he’s looking to raise funds with the mega-millionaires, he can now say “look, I kicked the unions, reminded them its their own fault they don’t have jobs here by asking for too much.”
And great point about “throwing gold coins to the peasants as they pass by in their carriages.” If you’re a voter to whom this matters (let’s say it’s a single digit 5-9ish% of the workforce; or, Nevada swing votes), do you…
1. Take the coins
2. Accept the other side will fight for you, but lose, leaving you with no tangible gains.
What was grade level of Adlai Stevenson II speeches?
Trump was a spokesman in MLM World for about ten years before getting into politics. That’s why his rallies eerily resemble Amway or Herbalife “conventions” — how he learned all this stuff. Good article about this:
https://www.pyramidschemealert.org/an-untold-story-how-mlm-shaped-donald-trumps-politics-and-presidency/
Your source is dubious and the article four years old.
I thought that was a fun read, rather in line with your observation that Trump’s rhetoric is the rhetoric of the salesman. So American!
Y’all kinda missing the point. Trump is not an orator in the classic sense. I
once watched a speech by Fidel Castro. In an hour, he used a lot of different gestures
but never repeated one. The former leader of Germany during WWII was famous
for his gestures and stage-like communication with the audience that allowed crowd
response to be part of his ‘act. Trump just goes for the ‘tounge bath’ rambling on
with platitudes to reassure his audience that their twisted paranoid conspiracy minded
worldview is normal. Strether is right in using word-clouds to illustrate his essay.
> Trump just goes for the ‘tounge bath’ rambling on
with platitudes to reassure his audience that their twisted paranoid conspiracy minded
worldview is normal
I am fully aware that Trump is not a conventional orator; see my reporting on Trump’s speech in Bangor in 2016, which I attended. That post also shows how Trump structures his speeches (not conventionally). In this post, the table shows appropriate thematic variation across venues; IOW, Trump is fully in control of his register; “tongue bath,” though witty, implies the opposite.
Actually, the description of the speech, the length, and the word cloud put the speech more in the tradition of evangelical preachers from right here in the USA.
I’m intrigued that so far commenters have shied away from the “assassination attempt” section. The event was extraordinary; Trump’s telling of it, considered either as a political event or a narrative, equally extraordinary.
I’ll bite. Things that jumped out to me:
He probably knew that a lot of people were claiming it was glass. I wouldn’t think that matters. But it seemingly does to the people who pushed it as though it changed the story. Maybe he thought it was important to lay that to rest. No practical difference, but getting hit by a bullet directly might have more resonance. Even better if that actually happened.
Needless to say it’s very smart to speak well of people protecting your life, even/especially when they come under heavy criticism. Can always lay into their bosses later, but not the agents themselves.
Some spoke of his fist moment as irresponsibe and dangerous showboating, others called it heroic. If it helped avoid a panic, a dangerous stampede, by reassuring people, then one can certainly call it heroic. Granted, his point was different (his crowd was more concerned for him than for its own lives, very Crowd-as-Face? better still, this good behaviour was rewarded), but indirectly it plays into the latter perception. It’s important to sustain morale; it is part of his role and his value to his followers.
Well I am waiting for the Rap Album …. Felon, shot, rifts, and posse …
Far more interesting is how long Vance lasts, had DTS before, whiff of DT carking it or he be positioned as a youthful presidential candidate for the GOP in 4 years – seemed to cure that ….
The initial framing of it was very good, this is hard for me to say, only once, and so on… both gives it value and builds rapport with the listener, it’s a classic and very effective story-telling hook, unlike literature when the audience are usually somewhat blind going in, but here anyone listening would have known, digested hours of coverage and analysis over the last week (so there’s a “you’ve heard the rest now here the best” subtext), it’s very humanify-ing, very savvy. Suspect you’d be unlikely to find advisers or speech writers who would know to do this, if they did they’d be writing novels not speeches for politicians. it would be interesting to know how it gestated. After that opening the telling itself takes care of itself.
Meanwhile Biden’s tweet was disingenuous, firstly why wouldn’t he be watching it? Secondly he could just as easily watched something else, especially if he found it as insufferable as he’s alluding, the “what the hell was that?” Line just reads like something a cartoonish old man holding an ear trumpet to the side of his head.
Seeing a lot of talk from liberals/dems saying “Trump won’t debate Harris because he’s scared of her,” delusional.
I do wonder if he’ll have the discipline to say it only once. Unless, of course, it really is hard for him to say, in which case it seems uncharacteristic though understandable.
Ever in “spot the bullsh!t” mode, I noticed the remark about ear wounds bleeding more than any other kind [the story I have heard that it is scalp wounds that are especially bloody; OTOH, the ears are at least scalp-adjacent] and the correlation, or seeming lack thereof (there is blood, but not “pouring everywhere”], with the photos. “Blood pouring everywhere” would seem to be an significant overstatement, affirmed in the hearing of an audience that would know that it is a significant overstatement. Would that count as “bullsh!t”?
FWIW, ear wounds do bleed ALOT. My then 9 year old son hit the side of his head on the edge of a block wall and ripped the cartilage on the top edge of his ear. It was only a tear of 1/4″ and the ER was able to close it up with a butterfly bandage, but the towel we stopped the bleeding with and his shirt had to be thrown out as they were so bloody.
Better if the nobles do throw coins than if they simply hoard them and everything else remains the same.
It’s what the most successful post-Soviet Russian (and not just Russian, I think) politicians have done, by the way. Putin arguably just did it on a particularly grand scale with his various tweaks to the liberal system. To be fair, he did some other things too.
On love: reminded me of this quote from a Trump speech in North Dakota in June 2018: “We will make America loving again. Love it. Love it.” Makes me wonder if love is a recurring minor but overlooked theme…
To me this was a speech geared toward the Christians. The first clue was before he even opened his mouth when Ivana did the sign of the cross behind him as he took his place on the podium.
The symbolism of his taking his place is important, he is being humbled, is indicating he’s equal to everyone on the stage. The way he addresses the audience is as equal.
He should have died but was ressurected, went down but then rose again. There are greater things than this.
And Christianity is all about love – love of God, love of neighbour, love within the community of believers, love as the fruit of the holy spirit.
And the audience are witnesses. They are witnessing the holy spirit moving him to love as a result of this experience.
Essentially Trump in this speech is showing that he’s no longer the old Trump but, thanks to this attempt on his life, is a redeemed Trump, reborn, has found God.
His mentioning the crowd not moving, not running, shows Christian resolution in face of fear, there are obvious biblical themes there – David and Goliath, Gideons Army, Joshua at Jericho, etc., not to mention the disciples who fleed when Christ was bearing the cross, enduring the passion. Trump is in effect saying he was surrounded by people of God that day, and that is what it looks like.
His restraint in not mentioning Biden is his personal struggle to overcome himself, not give in to temptation, to be a good Christian, to love his enemies, to say nothing ill of his neighbors, to not cast stones, to leave judgement to God.
A non-Christian audience is going to have a hard time with any of this and we saw that firsthand in Marjorie Taylor Green, she doesn’t know how to handle herself, what to make of it, for obvious reasons. Maybe Trump will convert her.
If Bernie Sanders were the Tump killer before he’s even more so now. Even though he’s Jewish, as a socialist these are his talking points – Christianity is fundamentally socialism, Marx is just a different wording of Christ.
I should also point out Christians are familiar with blood dripping down the face.
The crown of thorns. That is something that would hit most Americans even if only subconsciously.
The official media and many partisans are determined to manage the narrative, which makes them blind to the imagery that is embedded in the collective American psyche. Maybe they are just unable to see and understand it. If you create a separate culture while demonizing or mocking the older culture while contributing to and self justifying its suffering, maybe you can’t? This would give a reason to understand the emotional divide as well as the economic and social ones. To be a part of one, you make yourself unable to see the other.
An invisible crown that pricked his ear?
Blood about his face? Cultural imagery is not always explicit or exact, but it is real and deep. The Crown of Thorns.
I thought Ivanka had converted to Judaism.
I liked this essay. Much more open minded than I am used to seeing on this site, even the comments.
I suspect Trump has always been a bit of a rotter (heel).
Power seems to have effected him differently that what one might usually expect from a politician. Instead of corrupting him it may be uncorrupting him. He may take his responsibilities seriously. Imagine!
We are not close minded. We are rigorous. Big difference.
And we are grateful and much better for that approach. Because of this excellent site and a great comment section I actually know who a Victoria Nuland , a Robert Kagan are and better understand the potential, and very real, failings of a foreign policy built on diplomacy in name only. Let alone all manner of nonsense in a modern US economy and the free markets mantras.
Many thanks.