Monday 6 February 2017

Words appear to be a weapon of war for Mr Trump with no meaning outside his own experience

As you know, I am reluctant to criticise politicians from other countries given that this sorry nation harbours one of the biggest collection of political misfits and incompetents it is possible to imagine. No British citizen who supports the appalling set of braindead dinosaurs who inhabit the pigsty has a right to comment on the personnel from other states. However, if I may be allowed to make some observations about Donald Trump I trust you will forgive me this indulgence. As I noted the other day, never in my lifetime has any one person so dominated the news media and the column inches in our press. I trust you will accept that any observations I make are not made for malicious purposes and are just that, observations that are not made to be offensive or personal, although it is almost impossible to avoid looking like that. After only two weeks in office I can only conclude that the American political system is in the first stages of a significant crisis that is threatening to tear that country apart and it behoves us to understand why as it affects the entire world.

I am reminded of the Muslim gentleman who addressed the Democratic convention and asked if Trump had ever read the Constitution. We have also seen this week, numerous persons and institutions challenging his measures on constitutional grounds. I have, even this early, concluded that Mr Trump has not indeed ever read the Constitution, does not even begin to understand it if he has read it, or that he even cares about it. I have now read several commentators saying that Trump never reads books. Now I don't know if that is correct or not, but it struck me as being very probably true. As anyone can see and hear, Trump is completely monosyllabic and is obviously incapable of speaking in sentences or continuous narration. Again I ask you to accept that this is an observation and not a criticism. I am struck and rather intrigued by the manner in which he frequently fails to finish a sentence and simply tails off as if he has quite forgotten what he was saying. This makes me suspect that even if he attempted to read the American Constitution he would not even begin to understand it because he displays a very limited vocabulary and although he speaks a great deal, he says very little and persistently repeats himself. This is not particularly important in an individual except that in this case the individual is the President of the United States in whom a command of language is an absolute essential. When I wished to understand the American political system I made a point of reading the American Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers which I consider would be a minimum requirement for anyone seeking office in the USA. That, however requires a vocabulary that includes political terminology that you will not learn within a business environment.   

You see language is both symbolic and representational. Language is a major source of our meanings system and the more limited our vocabulary then the more limited is our ability to understand the complexity of language and the meanings derived from that language. In addition, language is cultural and differs between cultures; for example an American visiting Britain may well find him/herself being asked if they would like to enjoy a fag and be met with bewilderment if they display offence at such a suggestion. If you do not read and you limit yourself to a very narrow cultural base of experience of others and their diversity, you deny yourself both understanding and a breadth of meaning. As a result the Constitution will contain words, and more importantly concepts, that will not make any sense to Trump as they will be unfamiliar to him and were written within a very different cultural context from his experience. He will not possess a personal lexicon that would enable him to interpret nor understand them. Thus, it appears to me that we have the highest office in the United States occupied by someone who doesn't understand the fundamentals underpinning the system he has become responsible for, and who has little possibility of ever developing an understanding. That is why he bridles at questions challenging his determination to get his own way. He fails to understand that being CEO of a company is a very different thing from being CEO of a nation state. He simply does not understand politics. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat   
 

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