What a wonderful, quintessentially Althouse post.
And of course Donald Trump wasn't thinking much about any of this when he employed "normalize." He's not on the same wavelength as Althouse, right? Am I right? You know I'm right. Trump uses less complicated words. Less complicated, but great. Really great words. Great, beautiful words. I guarantee it, that you will think that they are beautiful words. You will think that they are such beautiful words, you'll say, "Please, Mr. Trump! Your words are too beautiful! We can't take any more beautiful words!" But you're going to love it. Big time.
January 30, 2017
Normalize, Part 3.
From the comments on "Normalize, Part 2": Chuck said:
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Well we can all admit that Trump is not even in the same sport (let alone the same league) as the world's GREATEST orator ever! That orator is so great that he need not even be named. His eloquence was such that it just sent tingles up the legs of some individuals!
I have to admit, Trump an't so much a good talker as some of them there other folks that have been in charge. He sure kin get stuff done though! He might even be HUGE!
I never get tired of people emulating Trump's speaking and writing style. Never. That was particularly good.
Shouldn't it be fewer complicated words. Actually, Trump's words aren't complicated. His speaking style comes across as prolix (complicated word) in a transcript but is easy to understand audio-visually.
Speaking of Tingles, apparently he opened his mouth again today. Probably afraid people would forget his name. I almost have. Thank God I wasn't there.
The silly son of an Isle of Lewis immigrant domestic does not talk with the right accent to get into Oxford. He just says what he means as straight forward like as the grandson of a Presbyterian fisherman should talk.
But what he says is so relevant and true that most of the world is in total panic, and sees no remedy except to destroy him first before he destroys years of their carefully constructed Big Brother world religions.
Blogger Freeman Hunt said...
I never get tired of people emulating Trump's speaking and writing style. Never. That was particularly good.
I hafta (sic) agree.
Did you see the Dutch do Trump? That was particularly good.
One thing about Trump-as-president; when you become President of the United States, all of a sudden everything you say becomes history. As history, it gets recorded. And in the age of the internet, those transcripts are on public websites.
It's a remarkable thing, reading a Trump transcript. Here's the transcript of his CIA speech:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-cia-speech-transcript/
It strikes me as a really good exemplar of a Trump speech. The usual tics are there, of course. But even more, it demonstrated the nature of Trump's meandering line of thought, with all of the odd little narrative eddies and backwaters, before he returns to anything like a coherent thought.
You read it, and wonder how anybody decided where to separate paragraphs.
It was Trump's first presidential speech after his Inaugural Address (and remarks at the various balls on Inauguration Night). I can hardly believe that they didn't have better prepared remarks for the President. I can usually tell where the written lines stop, and the Trump lines begin. The CIA speech was So Much Trump, I am still mystified.
It's also funny to compare the remarks of Mike Pence immediately preceding the Trump remarks. It's as if the word processor broke after Pence stopped talking, leaving Trump's lines mixed up in a randomizer.
(Randomizer, with a tip of the hat to Althouse.)
eric said... [hush][hide comment]
Blogger Freeman Hunt said...
I never get tired of people emulating Trump's speaking and writing style. Never. That was particularly good.
I hafta (sic) agree.
Did you see the Dutch do Trump? That was particularly good.
1/30/17, 3:48 PM
That is currently my favorite video...
Here...
Trump almost never aspires to eloquence; when he did so in his Inaugueration speech, all the talking heads jumped all over him. If he gets Chuck (the Commenter) as a speechwriter he should be safe.
Well he has normalized alternate facts big time. Axelrod is the lasted in Trump world.
The greatest orator ever, or least in this century. Been gone for ten (10) days now.
>All hat, no cattle
>All show,no go
>All bark, no bite (red line anyone?)
>All crown, no filling
>All icing, no cake (Obama to a T)
>All fart and no poo (must be an EPA regulation for this)
A lotta people voted against Trump.
That means, a lotta people disagree with Trump's policy prescriptions.
That means, the odds are, whenever Trump makes a policy prescription, e.g., Executive Order shoring up our very lax immigration policies, there's a large pool of Trump opponents to raise a stink.
That means, they will likely raise a stink.
Best to ignore sidestep most of the caterwauling by Trump's opponents.
"Freeman Hunt said...
I never get tired of people emulating Trump's speaking and writing style. Never. That was particularly good."
Meh. He just ripped off the "Netherlands" video idea.
"it demonstrated the nature of Trump's meandering line of thought, with all of the odd little narrative eddies and backwaters, before he returns to anything like a coherent thought. "
This reminds me of the old practice in writing history, for the writer to put in the speeches that he wished or expected the leader in question had said, in prose that seemed appropriate to the writer. Which always raised a bit of disbelief. What went down seems unlikely to have been the sort of thing that would have pleased a litterateur in his comfy villa.
I wonder what old Julius C was in the habit of telling the Xth Legion on the march, or what he said on the day of battle at the Sambre.
I suspect it wasn't quite the sort of thing Cicero would have praised.
I don't know why Althouse has to complexicize everything.
Facta non verba
People are talking about this new law. They love it! It's a great law and it's going to do wonderful things for the American people.
All around this country the American people, the greatest people, are fed up, and they know this new law is going to fix the border. That's why people have to act. Michigan. Arizona. California. We have to seal our borders. The American people
understand this, and are working to fix the border.
Now I work with Mexico. I know Mexico. But Mexico has to get its act together. I know great, great people from Mexico but the Mexican people have to get their act together.
*Applause
Freedom is next.
Custer at Little Big Horn: "Holy Cow! Look at all them f@#$%^! Indians!"
But even more, it demonstrated the nature of Trump's meandering line of thought, with all of the odd little narrative eddies and backwaters …
Yes. Just like ordinary conversation. Like people actually talk. So strange, upsetting and “odd,” I guess, to some … to have a President who doesn’t use Doublespeak all of the time.
He seems to get his point over though, doesn’t he? Trump seems to have done remarkably well, considering his lack of communication skills. Probably just dumb fucking luck, right?
Heard one of Trump's staffers use the word deinstitutionalization today to describe breaking down the institutional structures of the federal government. It's a word my dad used in a paper co-authored with a doctoral student in sociology in 1962 to describe the process of preparing long-term mental patients for venturing outside the safety and security of their institutional setting on a day pass for things like shopping or perhaps doing menial work like mowing lawns or trimming hedges and interacting with normal people in the outside community who may or may not have realized that they were hiring or selling goods to a mental patient. The state legislature latched onto it for the purpose of shutting down the hospital to free up funding for the development of community mental health centers.
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