Friday, August 31, 2018

Hate Donald Trump? No way. It's more a sense of luftschlossmoddermüde



     There are 171,476 words in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, from common—the definition of "set" runs 22 closely-packed pages—to pleasantly obscure: "aglet," for instance, the hard tube at the tip of a shoelace.
     Quite a lot, really. But not enough to cover the range and complexity of human experience, judging from other languages, which have words for concepts that we can't express in a single term. The Japanese word mibojin comes to mind: it means "widow," though its literal translation is "not-yet-dead person" with all the obvious implications of superfluousness: a woman without a husband is just sitting around waiting to die.
     Perhaps another language can serve up the elusive word to describe how I'm feeling toward Donald Trump. Readers certainly offer their opinions:
     "Why the hate for TRUMP every single day" writes J.T. Kozlov, forgetting his interrogative punctuation.
     "Your level of anger and hate is debilitating," Stephen Hardy writes.
     "All you do is write about how you hate Trump," writes Ron Olovich.
     I could give 100 more examples. They believe I’m criticizing Trump — not every day, I must point out — because I hate him. Trump himself flings the word about. “The hatred and extreme bias of me by CNN has clouded their thinking” he tweeted Thursday. It’s easy to see why. With “hate,” Trump and his fans can pretend he isn’t being criticized fairly, but out of blind animus. Projecting hate upon the president’s critics ignores their valid complaints. It’s in harmony with the frothing, head-exploding reaction they like to image takes place among those they sneer at as “libtards,” horrified by Trump’s unending vandalism against our country, its laws, traditions and values.
     Back in the non-fantasy world, all the libs I know are in full if grim possession of their unexploded heads, while of course giving those heads frequent sad shakes of amazement.
     “Amazed” is closer to the mark, but not quite right. “Shocked”? Not anymore.
     Not hate. I certainly don’t hate him. He’s hardly worth hating. Honestly, if Americans elected a dog as president, would you hate the dog?
     What’s the right word?

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8 comments:

  1. Posting to Face Book. See if that stirs up the swamp creatures.

    john

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  2. There's a good, standard English word for what I feel about Trump: contempt.

    One thing I find fascinating, and appalling, about the whole Trump phenomenon is how his supporters elected someone who embodies, in reality, all the things they falsely accused Obama of.

    Obama was a "thin-skinned narcissist" who was "utterly unqualified" and "divisive." When his wife tearfully eulogized a 15-year-old who was tragically killed with "Hadiya Pendleton was me, and I was her," she was "making it all about herself." Any of that sound familiar?

    And when they accuse Trump's critics of "hate," they are taking the blind, stupid hatred they had for Obama--which was, let's face it, based on racism--and projecting it onto the other side.

    I'm starting to think that the political breach in this country will never be healed.

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    Replies
    1. Scribe, there is great denial upon the land. Making an offhand comment about the current lack of eloquence emanating from the Oval Office, a cousin replied with an Obama slam. I would suggest he watch Obama's speech at the McCain services today, but why waste my time.

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  3. There's always the classic "backpfeifengesicht" - apparently colloquial German for a face that needs slapping.

    Though I've also seen it as a face in need of a fist.

    You pick. They both work for me.

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  4. My mother spoke only Yiddish until she began school at the age of five. I learned lot of expressions from her that would aptly describe His Orangeness, but were she still alive, she'd probably call him the word she used when somebody pissed her off the most. She'd say "He's a shtunk"--a stinker. Sometimes, the basics are the best.

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  5. There is a station on my Dish TV, think it's NEWSX, that runs a flop of "news": Greetings from Trump Country, followed by Diana, Princess of Wales, Bill O'Reilly's No Spin News, Huckabee, UFOs Crashed My Vacation, and occasionally, I cant find the listing, Dummycrats. So. Until a channel, no matter how unheard of, runs a show called, "Our President is an Idiot and his Followers are Brain Damaged" your Trump supporting readers can shut up about the media, and you, "spewing hate". So there!

    ReplyDelete

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