Trump’s Sodomy of Language: Lessons We Didn’t Learn From Orwell’s “On Politics and the English Language”

(Gary Larsen, The Far Side)
Ever think of President Trump as the dog or cat above?
Before November’s election and the End of Reason, polls indicated Trump’s greatest asset was the fact that he was not a politician.
How does a lack of relevant work experience in any given field become an asset for a man wanting to lead that field? Is a carpenter a better candidate than a plumber to fix my collapsed sewage pipes? Is a tailor an equally as skilled person as the neurosurgeon to fix a brain? Perhaps a barista would be a great mechanic but can he fix the car and a cup of coffee? No, no and no.
Trump’s lack of political experience anywhere was troubling enough but more alarming to me was/is the fact that he lacked verbal fluency and command to function in the political arena above a toddler’s age. In order to negotiate with the players of any given industry or field, one must be able to navigate the parameters of that industry/field. Without a familiarity of this industry’s language, a person can’t get much done and my fear for Donald was that his Greatest Asset would result in situations that looked like this:

Writing God, Phillip Roth, wrote this in an email with The New Yorker magazine published on January 22, 2017 in “Roth on Trump” by Judith Thurman:
“I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”
77 words may be hyperbole but ouch. Even I concede Trump knows more than 77 words.
The English language has a shitload of words. An exact number is impossible given the number of dead words and the derivatives of live words. Thus, there’s really no way to determine with any degree of accuracy how many words a typical native speaker of any language uses regularly. We do know that by age 5, a child knows approximately 5,000 words. And for English, we also know that the number of words a person uses verbally is about half he will use in writing. Somehow, linguists have determined that there are 3,000 words that occur 95% of the time in common verbal and written exchanges. I question if Trump legitimately knows 50% of those.
Undeniably, Donald Trump has developed a working business vocabulary greater than 77 words which has made him millions, if not billions, of dollars. Here, he has fluency. However, only some of this business vocabulary is transferable to politics and, the words that can, often assume a different meaning.
Still, a politician has to be fluent not just in business, but also in the language of government, philosophy, religion, history, geography, economics, civics and legalese if he is to function, even poorly, in the political arena. In addition, he must also possess some degree of cultural awareness, if not actual knowledge, of a foreign country’s customs, norms, and current events in order to engage in any meaningful discourse. Otherwise, you might see something like this-
and maybe even behavior like this-
and, after meeting the leader of the country accused of tampering with your country’s election, you hear this:
“I said, ‘Did you do it?’ And he said ‘No, I did not.’ I then asked him a second time in a totally different way. He said absolutely not.’”
Now, come on, how many sincerely believe Donald Trump has enough command of the English language to ask any question in 2 different ways?? Silly.
There are those who see no correlation between a person’s verbal fluency and his intelligence. When that linguist asserted Trump’s verbal skills hovered at a 5th grade level, members of that group thought, “So?” To the Poverty of Language Theory which asserts those with limited vocabularies will compensate with profanities to hide their lack of intellectual acumen, you call, “Bullshit.” Surprisingly, I do too, but likely for a different reason. This theory assumes the person employing this strategy is deliberately doing so to purposefully hide his language deficits. This would require some degree of self-awareness. Enough said.
In his 201 days, 48 minutes and 27 seconds as the President of the United States, Donald Trump has exhibited an impressive lack of self-awareness. He doesn’t even admit to saying something when shown transcripts and/or video tapes of him saying it. This, Trump eloquently calls, “fake news”.
If it is true that a person learns one new word a day until middle age, then Donald Trump has not acquired any new vocabulary since 1987. With zero political experience, his own admittance that he does NOT read and with frighteningly little fluency in the language of politics, what we have done, what we have permitted, is exactly what George Orwell warned in 1946 in his essay “Politics and the English Language”. Orwell wrote, “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
Let’s take a look. Is this clear language?
“I find it really, very sad…”
“…very, very rapidly…”
“…tremendous-absolutely tremendous…”
“It was a very, very successful trip, believe me…”
Nope.
How about this?
“Our attacks on terrorism are greatly stepped up — and you see that, you see it all over — (we’re) getting many other countries to make major contributions to the fight against terror. Big, big contributions are being made by countries that weren’t doing so much in the form of contribution.”
Hmmm…which countries, Donnie? Name those contributions you’ve referenced 3 times. Nope, sorry, not clear. And one more from an address Trump gave on June 1 in the Rose Garden.
“Further, while the current agreement effectively blocks the development of clean coal in America — which it does, and the mines are starting to open up. We’re having a big opening in two weeks. Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, so many places. A big opening of a brand-new mine. It’s unheard of. For many, many years, that hasn’t happened. They asked me if I’d go. I’m going to try.”
Clean coal? Huh? Who invited you where and for what? Whose opening something? So, nope, definitely not at all clear. Not. At. All. Seriously, what dafuque is he saying?
Orwell recognized that when you rely on imprecise language and ready-made phrases like Donald Trump does over and over and over, “…you don’t have to hunt about for words…or bother with the rhythms of your sentences…” Hell, you don’t even have to know the meaning of the words you use or speak in sentences at all.
In 1946, Orwell clearly saw that his world’s “present political chaos (was) connected with the decay of language.” Yes, Orwell was British and, yes, post WWII politics was chaos, but is this not the same disease that afflicts the US now? The only major difference is where Orwell saw politics adopting the practice of using a decadent style of writing, overinflated with scientific bs and Latin phrases, we see tweets and nonsensical tirades that ignore grammar and defy truth. Perhaps we are better suited to be the dog or cat in Larsen’s cartoon because mostly I truly do not know what the hell he is saying.
The website talkenglish.com claims that of the 2,265 most frequently used words, 254 are adverbs. Donald Trump’s favorite part of speech is definitely the adverb. Likely because adverbs lend themselves easily to repetition and emphasis, rather than example and explanation. Trump is allergic to those. With emphasis and repetition and few flaps of tiny hands, a speaker can easily evoke emotions and emotions, in turn, temporarily blind reason and logic and suspend the need for specificity and clarity of language. In this murky water, Donald Trump can evade sincerity. “The great enemy of language is insincerity.” (Orwell) Donald Trump is today’s great enemy of language.
When your working vocabulary hasn’t advanced since 1987 and you lack any significant experience in the field you now lead, when you do not read and refuse to learn the language of your contemporaries, the result is not just a decay of language, but more a sodomy of language. When words and meaning get butt raped, that great asset of not being a politician, makes the rest of us look like asses.
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Peace.
