How do we communicate what we’re going through right now? How do we select from the infinity of choices and realities that we face where to focus, and where to begin any narration?
We are certainly in an age of superlatives and metaphors. Ordinary language or speaking as we did maybe just 10 years ago, feels inadequate. The news often leaves us mute, if not angered, fearful, crying, or laughing at the craziness. It can feel like language itself is on the edge of failing us. Or maybe we are failing it; maybe we humans, or many of us, are failing in how we use one of our greatest inventions, namely complex, structured, and symbolic language.
We think of the primary job of words as helping us survive and communicate, but to do that it must aid us in perceiving reality more clearly and in better communing, coming together with others. The words we use, and the metaphors we create, shape how we perceive, understand, and act. Metaphors, as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explain in their book Metaphors We Live By, are not just beautiful or extravagant ways of talking, but the way we define and frame reality. Truth. And relate with others. If we think of a moment talking with another person as a battle instead of an exchange of views, we are more likely to become physically embattled.
Or maybe words are working too well. Words could always be manipulated to deceive, distract, and hypnotize as well as utilized to analyze and focus. So maybe today our words are succeeding more in hiding than revealing. Maybe our words are failing to bring us together because too many of us are not examining our words to discern if they are bringing us closer or further away from the reality we are talking about.
And I realize I’m being contradictory, using language to point out how our language use is possibly failing us.
Today, too many political leaders are spreading disinformation, flagrantly distorting words, butchering language, and by doing so bringing us to the edge of butchering each other. The GOP have built a wall of lies dividing this nation of millions of real people into saviors vs devils, two sides in a war, 2 ends of a rope.
They are striving to win, to seize power at any cost, even if it means treating fellow political leaders, who used to be colleagues or at worst opponents, as enemies. The GOP lie about the 2020 election even though this undermines faith in, and the workings of, the government they swore to protect and serve. For example, they called a violent attack on Congress to stop a democratic election “legitimate political discourse.”
DJT labeled the FBI as an agency with a long, unrelenting history of corruption. Yet, while in office, he tried to force the FBI to serve his personal interests over the nation’s, and fired the FBI director partly to stop an investigation into himself and his own long legacy of corruption. DJT and his GOP sycophants attacked the FBI’s legal seizing of documents he had illegally taken from the White House and secure quarters by saying if they can go after an ex-President, they could go after anyone⎼ when that is precisely the point of a law, that it applies or should apply neutrally to everyone. Their blatant, malignant distortions sometimes evoke an anger so deep we can shout but not speak.
So which metaphors fit best? Are humans by nature more like hungry ghosts, children lost at sea, or born loving? Are we in a race? A civil war? On the edge of societal collapse and a climate emergency? Noted professor, philosopher, activist Noam Chomsky said we are at the most dangerous time in human history. Are we returning to a sense of oneness with nature⎼ and a time when we honor science, not deny it? Are we falling into a Christian white nationalist dictatorship? Or are we finally realizing just how important it is to live in and participate in running a democracy and a caring community?
Is DJT a ticking time bomb that could go off anytime? Are we in a race to see if he can be defused before he explodes? Or are we about to right a president’s unprecedented wrongs?
It feels to me we are in a race to see if he can be prosecuted for one of his many crimes before hordes of his adherents once again violently attack our nation and democracy. They threaten election officials while GOP controlled state legislatures and Attorney Generals try to seize the power to control the counting and suppress the votes of Democrats. Which will happen first⎼ DJT succeeds in getting his adherents into office and overthrowing what’s left of democracy? Or he’s arrested for his crimes despite threats of violence from his followers?
The seizure from Mar-a-Lago of boxes of documents, 11 sets of top-secret and special access records, including nuclear information crucial to our nation’s defense, could lead to prosecution. He could be convicted of lying or obstruction; in a written declaration on June 3rd his lawyers said he had turned in all the documents he had taken from the White House when he clearly hadn’t.
He could and should also be prosecuted for violation of the Espionage Act and of a statute that bars the unlawful possession or destruction of government records or documents. Conviction on these counts could possibly disqualify DJT from holding federal office.
DJT is, of course, the subject of several other investigations, including by the Jan 6 Committee and possibly one by the DOJ. Fraud and other financial investigations in New York. And in Georgia, he and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, are being investigated for trying to overturn the 2020 election. A group of DJT’s supporters, working with his lawyer Sidney Powell, were illegally granted access to voting records, computers, and memory files. The Washington Post reports this is part of a GOP national trend. The GOP say the election was rigged as they try to rig it. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has opened formal criminal inquiries into such actions.
So, what will happen next? Since the metaphors we use shape how we perceive and respond to what happens around us, we must question which metaphor, if any, best suits the political situation and best reveals the depths and possibilities of our lives? Which way of perceiving and understanding what we face will best bring people together, to empower and motivate actions to secure our rights, advance democracy, and protect the physical world that is our only home?
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Adam Jones on Flickr under CC License