I love words. A big part of my life. At my administrative jaw judge job, creating lengthy documents; authoring books; blogging; and in occasional newspaper letters and commentaries. Not to mention a lot of reading.
Words convey ideas and tell stories. They embody who we are. And the richness of language is a treasure one needn’t be rich to enjoy. It’s that enjoyment, my intimate relationship with words, having fun juggling them, savoring them, that keeps me writing and reading. Language is virtually my second spouse.
I’m also keenly mindful of language’s huge role in human development. It’s what really made us human. This fantastic mode for putting concepts into words, transmittable from one person to another, even one generation to another, enabled civilization itself to emerge. Then when writing came along, it was off to the races.
So words are supremely important. Sacred, really. Making the corruption of language a great crime attacking society’s very underpinnings.
These reflections were triggered by a recent Trump campaign e-mail. (I get them because I’d donated to Marco Rubio in 2016!) The message highlighted the words “Crooked Kamala.” Trump’s been spewing them at rallies too.
His vocabulary is limited. Remember “Crooked Hillary?” Then “Crooked Joe Biden” endlessly regurgitated? Sheesh, get a new shtick, dude.
But what really burns me is not the assault on those candidates but upon my beloved language. An incessant diarrhea of similarly disgusting word turds, shat out with such louche heedlessness. Humpty Dumpty said a word “means just what I choose it to mean.” But for Trump, it’s worse yet, the actual meaning of words is irrelevant.
He does know words have power. That’s how he uses them — not for their true meaning, but regardless of it, as weapons.
To be clear, there’s never been a glimmer of a hint, not a whisper in the wind, explaining how Vice President Harris might be “crooked.” Trump needs none. That’s no factor in his saying it. Same regarding Biden.
“Projection” is a well-known psychological disturbance where people ascribe their own faults to others. Trump is the textbook case. Usually guilty of the very accusations he so wildly flings at others.
Crooked? Nobody’s more crooked than him — in the precise true meaning of the word. Courts have so adjudicated. Indeed, his saying “crooked Kamala” is itself the epitome of crookedness.
This is all merely about words, you might say. But what are we without words? If they stop having meaning, society cannot work. Making Trump’s desecration of language one of his greatest crimes.