As usual, there’s been lots of political news. Like President Trump’s recent ‘self-congratulatory’ press conference, celebrating the nation’s unemployment rate dropping to 11%. Yes, 11%! You have to wonder if that double-digit unemployment number should have an asterisk, since, previously, unemployment was around 3.5% or so.
Maybe taking a victory lap, celebrating double-digit unemployment, was a bit over the top, during that press conference, but as his friends and followers might say, that’s just Trump being Trump. With COVID-19 screwing up the economy — and many lives — and as the pandemic is surging, again, nationwide, suggesting that everything’s hunky-dory, perhaps, is premature? But the President, apparently, knows the meaning of hyperbole.
Along with those around him, he finds things to pick at and hyperbolize. Like the way he’s hyperbolizing about his perceived enemies-of-the-moment, those radical lefties. He’s vowing to defeat them. That’s his messaging-of-the day. In his July 4th speech at the White House, he was all worked up about the radical left waging “a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children,” according to a CNN story.
Even for someone like Richard Nixon, words like that would have been over the top, decades ago, when Nixon was president.
Blowing things out of proportion, with evocative words, and hyperbolizing, hyperbolizing, hyperbolizing. That’s spin, and some other things, as well, like false narratives and smoke and mirrors.
Spin, essentially, is getting people to think what you want them to think, as in trying to convince everyone that double-digit unemployment is an outstanding result? Or, accusing those lefties of erasing our values and indoctrinating our children?
False narratives can seem to be very believable. And, according to the dictionary, “Something that is described as smoke and mirrors is intended to make you believe that something is being done or is true, when it is not.”
So, it seems that’s that, at these moments in time, in this highly unusual presidency. But, hyperbole aside, it’s hard to figure what the President means when he equates liberalism with fascism. Unless things have changed, up until now, there was the far left and the far right. Weren’t fascists considered to be kind of far right, and liberals kind of far left? Where is this liberal fascist stuff coming from? Have the words, all of a sudden, been redefined? Or, is this more of Trump being Trump, where he seems to be pulling things out of somewhere, to suit his needs? Where he picks at something, and hyperbolizes?
Talk about pulling things out of somewhere, didn’t President Trump just suggest that 99% of COVID-19 cases are harmless?
Is this just Trump being Trump? And politicians being politicians? And government being government, out there in Washington DC, and in communities, nationwide? Even in Pagosa Springs?
Let’s hope not!
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.