I’ve tried today to write a meaningful observation on Donald Trump’s language over the past few weeks and days, but I have discarded many attempts because others have done so demonstrably better than me – today’s Guardian Opinion, for example; also US Republicans and Generals – and they have a significant voice and audience.
The importance for me stating something personally relevant here is to recognise there is one kind of language/expression of his that is dangerous and disturbing yet it can and should be ridiculed and satirised. I try to do this most often through a found poetry that appropriates the words he uses and then randomises and rearranges these to highlight what I see as the dumb reality of their original form. Obviously not on my own, but I harbour a thought that such ‘creative’ reflections can have their own contribution to play [acknowledging the pun] in sustaining a commentary of why this man is unfit to be President of the USA [acknowledging the platitude].
Trump’s most recent many sides observation doesn’t seem to me to bear this kind of creative playfulness as a method for exploration and exposure. Indeed, its existence means my idea for further creative working on his recent war rhetoric is redundant: I certainly can’t be playful with that after the impact of what the President has spoken, and also not said, in response to events in Charlottesville.
Of course my decision-making on this is of little importance, but it is the most meaningful comment I can make on Trump’s recent language when I cannot find anything else to say.