President Donald Trump, at his smirking, scoffing, bragging best, spent his State of the Union address making a campaign rally speech. He could not conceal his rage at the Democrats who are duly elected members of Congress but won’t bow before him like the Republicans who spent the evening applauding, enjoying and relishing the president’s personal vendetta.
Trump believed he had every right to attack the Democrats as he laid out his plan to dismantle democracy, destroy the environment and wreck the federal government. His cruelty was everywhere in full dress parade. His adoring fans enjoyed and applauded the cruelty.
I gave the president the benefit of paying close attention to his rhetoric and facial expressions. One phrase told the story of his purpose: “These people.”
“One phrase told the story of his purpose.”
Here’s an example:
This is my fifth such speech to Congress, and, once again, I look at the Democrats in front of me and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud. Nothing I can do. I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations or announce the answers to greatest economy in history or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded, and these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. They won’t do it no matter what. Five, five times I’ve been up here. It’s very sad. And it just shouldn’t be this way.
Here’s another:
So while we take out the criminals, killers, traffickers and child predators who were allowed to enter our country under the open-border policy of these people, the Democrats, the Biden administration — the open border, insane policies that you have allowed to destroy our country — we will now bring in brilliant, hard-working, job-creating people.
An ancient phrase
“These people” belongs to an ancient rhetoric of superiority, a phrase of division, disdain and dismissal.
“Those people” — that’s what the segregationists said about African Americans marching across the Selma bridge for the right to vote.
“Those people” — that’s what nativist Americans say about brown-skinned immigrants.
“Those people” — that’s what gated community, high-brow, rich people say about ordinary Americans in the rural South.
I understood exactly what Trump meant when he sneered, “These people.” I grew up with those words branded on my consciousness. “Those rednecks” haunted my first three decades of life.
Trump managed to wrap all the derision and demonization of Democrats into a single phrase that previously had the decency to die in what was becoming a more diverse and inclusive America. But Trump has disinterred this discredited phrase and constructed a wall between the “superior people” — the moral, high and mighty people, God’s people — and “these people.”
“Trump keeps grudges in a fiery furnace of his subconscious and stokes the fires of his resentment as his daily prayers.”
This speech had been in the making for years. Trump keeps grudges in a fiery furnace of his subconscious and stokes the fires of his resentment as his daily prayers. And in the most inappropriate setting, with the most disgusting rhetoric and the most awful performance ever given by a United States president, he disrespected his fellow Americans.
Throwing bombs and making promises
The highly partisan speech promised his supporters the moon. The lapdog Republicans were giddy at the idea of starving children, increasing the devastating impact of global warming and dismantling the “swamp.”
The apocalyptic mood pervaded a deeply divided House as the “mercurial and easily offended provocateur,” as The New York Times’ Peter Baker described Trump, threw rhetorical bombs in head-spinning gyrations in both policy and politics. Imperialism (“We are taking the Panama Canal” and Greenland “one way or another”), nationalism, xenophobia, and sexism (“only two sexes”) were the galloping horses of the apocalypse.
For a teacher of speech, Trump’s rhetoric was hard to endure. Rhetorical scholar Robert L. Ivie has described Trump’s rhetoric earlier as “coarse, nondeliberative, illiberal, deceitful and destabilizing.” And Trump’s open and willing reduction of Democrats made clear we are in for a long and protracted four years.
“He forgets he is still a convicted felon and a serial liar.”
The speech was pure, undiluted Trump. The demolition motif, the rage, the disgust, the tattered bag of lies spilling out over the audience, were a vindication for Trump. As he taunted Democrats for daring to put him on trial, he growled, “Yeah, how did that work out for you?” He forgets he is still a convicted felon and a serial liar.
His speech was riddled with lies and misinformation only a Republican Congress and a Trump rally crowd would swallow whole.
The trumpet blast signaling the tone of the entire speech, though, was, “These people.”
In the ancient Hebrew book of Leviticus there is an occasion where a trumpet blows and God’s yabal (jubilee) takes place. The yabal signals the breaking of the vicious cycles of competitive stealing, lying and cheating. All the debts are forgiven and all the wealth is distributed. The poor get their stuff back.
Trump’s trumpet blast debuted the opposite of jubilee. Instead of sharing, there is going to be more for the wealthy. The president even hawked his proposed “$5 million gold card” for other wealthy people to join him in America as hogs at the trough. The anti-immigration, nativist president wants to sell “gold cards” because everything is transactional. He’s a phony real estate developer and a con artist. Trump will sell anything, buy anything, and he will cheat you.
With the reverse, with the “these people” comments, there’s no more posturing, pretending. We are in a political war with an energized right-wing base willing to destroy democracy to “stick it to the libs.” For the first time in my life, I believe it is 1861 again.
The speech seemed like an end in itself; its finger pointing and scapegoating were classic demagogic gestures.
“Trump didn’t come to address the state of the union; he came to further divide us.”
Trump didn’t come to address the state of the union; he came to further divide us. This was classic demagoguery, meant not to advance democratic deliberation and cooperation but to shut it down with scapegoating, oversimplifying complex issues and projecting an authoritarianism built on fear and hatred.
Here’s the warning: “These people” are Trump’s fellow Americans. To us and to all humans belong the promise of our Declaration of Independence — “all men are created equal.”
“These people” are the ones dedicated to the proposition of making the words of Thomas Jefferson more than an ideal but a reality.
“These people” have been busy making sure “all women” are created equal, “all races” are created equal, all humans regardless of gender, color or religion are created equal.
Trump has been blinded by his own rage and publicly divorced himself from all “these people.”
We are no longer fellow Americans. Instead, we have been called out, branded and identified as the enemy of the people.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
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