The bodies had hardly been cleared from Bourbon Street when President-elect Trump spouted off on social media about terrorists coming across the southern border as a result of Biden’s immigration policy. Typically, he had no idea what he was talking about and never apologized for the mistake. For his MAGA supporters, however, anything that comes from his mouth is irreparably true. Shortly after Trump’s politicized statement, it was revealed the perpetrator was an American citizen and military veteran who was born in Texas; but in MAGA world anyone with a name like Shamsud-Din Jabbar is innately a foreigner and most likely a terrorist.
About to begin his second term as president, Trump doesn’t seem to have gained any respect for the truth and still tries to benefit from every event that comes along and gets into his head. I suspect that Trump’s MAGA supporters don’t know the difference anymore; someone who isn’t white and/or has a foreign-sounding name is automatically branded as a member of the “other,” an enemy from elsewhere, the equivalent of a terrorist.
“If everyone always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that no one believes anything at all anymore.”
Hannah Arendt, 1973
To Speaker Johnson’s Way of Thinking, America “Ended Slavery” and “Settled the West.” Talk About Glossing Over the Truth!
Who’s to say what distinguishes an outright lie from a euphemism, especially given how many get floated around? Mike Johnson probably meant well when he accepted his speakership in the new Congress, but was it really necessary to claim the United States “ended slavery” and “settled the west”? Perhaps if we didn’t begin as a slave colony/nation and allow the “peculiar institution” to flourish for almost 200 years (never mind another 100 years of Jim Crow), we wouldn’t have had to end it. Even claiming that slavery “ended” is a polite euphemism for the Slave Power having been defeated in a terrible war that resulted in an estimated 1.5 million military casualties (of which this humble spirit was one). Let’s be clear–slavery wasn’t ended voluntarily based on altruism; its evil had to be defeated on the battlefield. While it could be said the war’s casualties were sacrificed on behalf of the abolitionist cause, I would argue that we should have avoided the peculiar institution in the first place. But hey, without it we never would have had the “Cotton Kingdom” and grown into one of the mightiest nations on earth.
As for “settling the West,” Speaker Johnson conveniently omitted almost three centuries of genocide and injustice committed against the indigenous people who lived on that land before European “settlers” arrived on the continent and began stealing it from them. Seizing an entire continent is, indeed, a monumental achievement, but “settling” is an awfully polite term for slaughtering people and stealing their land for your own benefit.
At Least Elon Musk Spares Us the Euphemisms!
When it comes to saying whatever’s on his mind, not even Trump can hold a candle to Elon Musk, who last week told his adversaries in the H-1B visa debate to “Take a big step back and F*CK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” (According to Forbes, Musk’s Tesla was among the leading employers of H-1B visa holders in 2024.) Okay, in fairness, the object of his vile wrath was the ever-vile Steve Bannon, who deserves a good, hard face F+CKING, but even so . . .