Trump recently tweeted a comparison between his impeachment process and lynching. Since “lynching” carries a bloody and brutal historical burden in the United States, this ignited the usual firestorm. Critics of the president chastised him for using the term, some Republicans expressed mild dismay at his word choice and others insisted that the president was spot on in his comparison. In addition to the specific matter of Trump’s use of the term, there is also the broader issue of the use of such terms in political discourse.
Trump could certainly be defended by asserting that he is ignorant of the connection of the term to racial violence in the United States and was simply using the term in utter innocence. Given the level of cognitive capacity Trump exhibits in his rambling, nonsensical speeches and his difficulty with language, it would be reasonable to accept that Trump really had no idea of the significance of the term. As such, the ignorance defense would be a plausible move.
Trump could also be defended by contending that he is not ignorant, but that he was merely using the term in a commonly used way. After all, one might argue, people do refer to metaphorical “lynch mobs” being after them or someone else. On this defense, the critics are reading too much into “lynching. Trump was simply using it the same way he uses phrases like “witch hunt”—a hyperbolic expression of his rage at others following due process to address his high crimes and misdemeanors.
Trump is obviously using the term incorrectly—lynching involves a parody of justice: mob violence inflicted without a trial. While one might disagree with the Democrats, they are operating well within the framework of the Constitution and in accord with the established processes for impeachment. One could argue that the whole point of hyperbole is to exaggerate—which is true. But to defend Trump’s use of the term by asserting he is right would be an error. The rage is, of course, not over Trump’s hyperbole but because of the connection of the word to brutal violence against African-Americans.
Some of Trump’s critics allege that Trump intentionally used the term in the hopes of triggering a response—if so, that strategy worked. Trump does enjoy attention and he certainly seems to delight in creating controversy around race. Critics have also argued that Trump intentionally chose the term because doing so would be an act of vicious racism—claiming that a lawful procedure against a corrupt white President is akin to the brutal lynching of blacks. This interpretation is certainly consistent with Trump’s past actions. His defenders could argue that Trump did not intend the tweet to be racist and those who see racism in it are the racists. Taking this view requires that one either be ignorant of the connotation of the term or believing that the president is ignorant. Or pretending to not understand how language works. This tactic seems very popular with his supporters. It seems that one must conclude that Trump is either utterly ignorant of the term’s connotation and history or that he engaged in yet another racist tweet. Now, what about the general use of such charged terms in political rhetoric?
While hyperbole is a standard rhetorical device, using such terms when they do not properly apply is morally problematic. First, such usage is inaccurate and serves to obscure the facts of the matter. Second, such usage appeals to emotions, usually in a negative way and this has no good use in resolving a matter rationally. Third, the frivolous usage of such terms is an insult to those who suffered and died. Fourth, it is also a lazy approach—if the matter is important, one should put some work into picking words. As such, terms like “lynching” should not be used in discourse except when one is referring to an actual lynching.
Lynching is a common metaphor in American political discourse, much beloved of Democrats when Vlinton was being impeached:
Democrat Rep. Jim McDermott compared Clinton’s Impeachment n 1998 to Lynching: “We’re taking a step down the road to becoming a political Lynch Mob… We are going to find a rope find a tree and ask a bunch of questions later..”
Democrat Rep. Gregory Meeks: “Indeed it is a Political Lynching”
Democrat Rep. Danny Davis: “I will not vote for this Lynching in the People’s house”
Democrat Rep. Jerry Nadler: “I wish we could get this over with quickly. … In pushing the process, in pushing the arguments of fairness and due process the Republicans so far have been running a lynch mob.”
Democratic Senator Harry Reid: “The Lynch Mob though, Mr. President, now has a new leader”
Democratic Senator John Kerry: “It’s a verbal political Lynching on the floor of the Senate”
Biden in 1998: “Even if the President should be impeached, history is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching…”
I got those, with video, from the first Twitter thread my search turned up. https://twitter.com/alx/status/1186729037437292544 I have no doubt there are at least thousands more, used in other contexts.
The fact that you, and apparently others, are now condemning Trump’s use of the same word, without even wondering whether it is unusual, shows that you have lost all capacity to make reasoned judgements on the subject of Trump. You really should stop talking about him.
It occurs to me to add, in case you mischaracterise this as “whataboutism”, that it is my view that using the word “lynching” was not a bad thing to do.
I don’t claim that it is bad, but the Democrats did it too. I claim it is not bad.
While many black people in the US were lynched, Wikipedia helpfully points to estimates for white people in the US as well, and numbers that dwarf both outside the US in many countries. America doesn’t own the word, or the activity. I am particularly indebted to Wikipedia for this line: “Lynch was not accused of racist bias. He acquitted blacks accused of murder on three separate occasions.He was accused, however, of ethnic prejudice in his abuse of Welsh miners”
I am half surprised Trump’s dedicated haters haven’t yet tried to drum up a campaign suggesting that his frequent references to “witch hunt” should be condemned as oppression of Wiccans.
Oh yea of little faith.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/12/18/witches-angered-trumps-talk-witch-hunt/2358950002/
Curious which wiki source for “lynch” that you are seeing. My understanding (and my wiki source) has the term being first used in reference to generally extrajudicial actions taken in Virginia during the (glorious) American Revolution against loyalist uprisings. Don’t (currently) see the passage that you reference there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lynch_(judge)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching
“Charles Lynch was a Virginia Quaker,[7]:23ff planter, and American Revolutionary who headed a county court in Virginia which imprisoned Loyalist supporters of the British for up to one year during the war. Although he lacked proper jurisdiction for detaining these persons, he claimed this right by arguing wartime necessity. Subsequently, he prevailed upon his friends in the Congress of the Confederation to pass a law that exonerated him and his associates from wrongdoing. He was concerned that he might face legal action from one or more of those he had imprisoned, notwithstanding the American Colonies had won the war. This action by the Congress provoked controversy, and it was in connection with this that the term “Lynch law”, meaning the assumption of extrajudicial authority, came into common parlance in the United States. Lynch was not accused of racist bias. He acquitted blacks accused of murder on three separate occasions.[8][9] He was accused, however, of ethnic prejudice in his abuse of Welsh miners.[6]”
The cite is to “Waldrep, Christopher (2006). “Lynching and Mob Violence”. In Finkelman, Paul (ed.). Encyclopedia of African American History 1619–1895. 2. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 308.”
I feel a bit mean piling on to this one, but can you imagine the reactions to Trump (as opposed to anyone else) saying
“Sorry, I can’t make it – my wife’s been slaving over dinner, and she’ll kill me if I’m late.” Trivialising The Greatest Evil Ever In History Anywhere and spousal violence in one sentence.
Or “I sat quietly through the whole speech. It was pure torture.” Disrespecting everyone who suffered at the hands of another human being anywhere, anywhen, up through Vlad the Impaler, Torquemada, Stalin’s USSR.
I genuinely don’t understand why so many people hate Trump so much that they can’t get any sense of perspective, and feel the need to read impossible implications into every word and action. Apart from the whole party tribalism thing, I completely understand not liking him personally, but not to the extent I see. This level of irrationality scares me.
Ah…so same. It was the line about Welsh miners that threw me off. Doesn’t appear in Chaz’s wiki page and it didn’t occur to me that Welsh miners (and they were lead miners apparently, not coal) were a thing in colonial America. My mind went to How Green Was My Valley and all that jazz.
Also, meant to address this:
The problem here is that Trump, intentionally or not, has broken and exposed The Narrative which is the basis of reality for those so enraged. They are being mentally tortured by having to deal, day after day now, with the fact that their perceptions of reality are not fitting reality. The more successes Trump has, the more effort that they must put forth to shoehorn The Narrative into reality. This obviously will not work and it further exposes other elements of The Narrative for even more and greater weaknesses. Trump must be destroyed, even to the point of calling a large scale rapist and murderer an “Austere Religious Scholar” who “Died”, or their whole world literally doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s like in the old SciFi TV/movie/cartoon sitcoms and such when the evil robots would be defeated with a logic they weren’t preprogrammed for and would go into an infinite loop melt down of “Does not compute. Does not compute….” This is amplified by the depth, the degree that they felt The Narrative defined them or defined their place in the world. Imagine if you found out one day that say, your mother was a prostitute or your father had been a serial killer. Something you didn’t know until well into your mature adult years. It’s a serious and, depending on the person, dangerous piece of information to discover. Now if say, you never liked your mother or father or had some other reason to distance yourself from them, the less damage such a revelation is likely to do to you. Similarly, for the more politically charged, the more entwined with politics and The Narrative that one is, the harder it will be on the psyche. I’m beginning to think this is why I’m noticing how soooo many lawyers are NeverTrumpers, yet the further you get in business from being dependent on government, the less NeverTrump attitude you see. This being especially relevant to “conservative” types.
Plus, reminded of an old, silly Dead Kennedys song lyric that simply went:
Dog bites
On my leg
Not right
Supposed to beg
Not that the DK’s themselves aren’t part of the problem in a small way. Though many of their fans (or ex-fans) get it.
The problem here is that Trump, intentionally or not, has broken and exposed The Narrative which is the basis of reality for those so enraged. They are being mentally tortured by having to deal, day after day now, with the fact that their perceptions of reality are not fitting reality.
I don’t find this answer satisfying.
I accept that cognitive dissonance in a deeply emotional matter could lead to irrationality, but we saw this irrationality right from Trump’s election, and even hints of it before.
I simply don’t understand how Trump is so different from GWB. Certainly the left opposed and mocked GWB, and I agree his administration deserved criticism on many fronts, notably surveillance and Iraq, but it was nothing like this.
Trump is an outsider, of course, and a world-class troll, crass and harsh in his public speech. These are all characteristics that would tend to inflame resentment. But even allowing for that, there seems to be a sense that Trump and anyone who supports him is simply outside the norms for the human race, and any statement or action is acceptable in criticising him.
Whatever the emotional source of this is, it eludes me.
(Trump has always posed a threat to the administrative class, hence the actions against him by the FBI and intelligence brass, but they have responded rationally, with practical plans to undermine and distract him and make him less effective. That’s a separate issue, and not relevant here.)
but we saw this irrationality right from Trump’s election, and even hints of it before.
I simply don’t understand how Trump is so different from GWB. Certainly the left opposed and mocked GWB
A ittle background. In general, consider that this is something that has been growing for decades. Each time a Republican president has come to power, the derangement syndrome went up a notch or two. This being the (intended) result of ever more years of leftist indoctrination in our schools, media, etc. and the natural dying off of older generations who were raised in a pre-mass media world where differences of opinion coalesced at a much more discrete level of church or city or occupation. Take a step back and look at the huge changes in sociological institutions that occurred starting in the early/mid-20th Century. In traditional American culture, a broad, national collectivism was distrusted not celebrated by those generations, nor was it promoted in the schools nor media. With the advent of mass entertainment and mass media coming directly into the home from afar, the mocking of people for being different, things that might have gone on in private in the past came out into the open, significantly magnified. Humans are social animals and they want to fit in. As their more granular institutions were pushed aside for a more overarching ideology, ever so slowly, deviation from the norm became more broadly socially unacceptable.
When you look at W vs Trump, the derangement as there with W as well. BDS preceded TDS by more than a decade. By the time he left office, W was despised by younger Americans. The casual office talk I encountered at work could at times be very uncomfortable. True, BDS wasn’t as strong as TDS but also consider that W was/is still a part of the establishment. W himself, and his entire establishment family, despise Trump. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone spelunking in some “conservative” establishment blogs but the derangement there is, when taken into context, even worse than with the D’s and it gets worse by the day. Especially, as I said earlier, as Trump gets more wins. Every time they think, like the coyote and the road runner, they’ve got him THIS time, only to be exposed by their own lies and distortions, the derangement goes up another notch. Look at how he embarrassed them simply by moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, months after taking office, when the GOP had been promising to do this for decades. Now granted, that’s not a big thing and I personally didn’t put much stock in it as an issue, but the very idea that it soooo couldn’t be done and yet it was done and rather quickly. Look at the wall. It has taken years now to build what every establishment entity said needed to be done. Voted on, approved by numerous D’s and R’s. Stopping illegal immigration, something that even Obama said needed to be addressed. But Trump actually is doing these things. And, as you note “we saw this irrationality right from Trump’s election”, well yes. Because he was an outsider, because he had support outside the normal institutions, the establishment saw that he had actual potential, serious political capital, a real will, a serious, proven ability (if not a love) to fight to make these changes. Imagine what might happen if he wasn’t so tied up with all the BS and could focus his attention on wasteful government spending. I pray to God that’s in his next 4 years.
This answer is even scarier.
I have been looking at US politics with the presumption that Trump was a special case, hated for his fame, wealth, crassness, brashness.
If the hatred and intolerance has spread as widely as you suggest, that suggests that the coherence of the US is in more trouble than I had thought.
It’s very hard to judge from outside. I read stories about kollege kraziness, and political hair-pulling, but, even allowing for the rewards of clickbait, it’s not really possible from a distance to extrapolate that reliably to real sentiment among non-extremists.
I had a long, well documented response to this but the damn web service crashed and I guess it’s lost. Was on my work computer so maybe in the cache there. Will have to look later. Suffice to say, it’s still somewhat alarmist to say this but given the amount of violence against Trump supporters leaving rallies and given the rhetoric in the media, civil war is not that far fetched. My guess is things will boil over among those who put on a brave warpaint face but once a few bodies hit the floor, things will sober up. Though there’s no telling where things go from there. Hell, there’s no telling where they go from here, just that from here it’s a tad more predictable. Maybe. If you’re “brave” enough to make such predictions.
I’m well into my Friday “happy” hour martini, so best I leave it at that and eat something. Hope this one gets through.
Yay.
https://youtu.be/hKd34tmlqko
Henry Fonda and Henry Morgan star in this 1943 Best Picture Oscar® Nominee about justice — and injustice — on the wild frontier. Two men (Fonda and Morgan) who ride into a town plagued by cattle rustling are recruited into a posse that aims to lynch three potentially innocent men accused of the crimes. It’s soon clear that vengeance could prevail as rationality faces off against mob mentality.
Plenty of white people were lynched, too.
C’mon TJ. You know the word Tyrant means many things, but the word Lynch can only mean one big thing.
Get with The Program.
Good one, WTP.
Great. I posted a reply to CoffeeTime but it had two links in it. Is it stuck in the spam filter?
Freed.
hmm. Must have clicked on the wrong link. This really has nothing to do with “Philosophy”, does it? Seems like just another “I Hate Trump” blog that parrots left-wing talking points, and mindless Facebook rants.
Carry on. Sorry to interrupt.
Hillary Clinton emerged from relative political obscurity last week to claim that Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic presidential candidate and member of Congress from Hawaii, was “the favorite of the Russians” prepping for a third-party spoiler run during a podcast interview. She went so far as to imply that the representative was “a Russian asset.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/22/20924999/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard-fight-explained
I’d like Mike to explain why the person he wanted to be president would say these things.
Here is my explanation:
https://youtu.be/ZlV3oQ3pLA0
The more general question here is of what use are academic institutions when the academics in charge of them refuse to deal in good faith discussions? When any point or idea can be wished away or even ignored? Further, Socratic inquiry requires some fealty to truth and by extension some degree of consistency in the relative stability in the definition and understanding of the meaning of words. And surely the idea of shame, something that many zoologists believe that other mammals are capable of, should not be excluded from the problem space. Is it really possible to have a meaningful debate with someone who has no shame?
CT, DH, TJ…Submitted for your consideration. Does space exist? Does Paris even exist?
https://youtu.be/YjvmIFrX1xQ
Sigh…one other thing… I thought this shouldn’t need to be said but after posting this it was bugging me that I didn’t say it, so here goes…
I want to be very clear. Very, very, very clear, that my purpose for posting that link is not in reference to the subject matter being discussed there, but rather the manner, the methods, the pseudo rules being advocated by the professor in the clip and how that professor abuses the supposed purpose of academia. It is that that I am interested in discussing further.
Wow, that was painful. Also, I can’t believe it is good for the students who are taught to think that way.