Wednesday, March 15, 2017

A Trump Thesaurus (a work in progress)

Of all the possible complaints about Donald Trump, a limited vocabulary should rank 
low on the list, and not just because it’s a telltale sign of the elitism we’re supposed to 
scorn these days. But Trump’s language – in his speeches, rare press conferences, 
interviews, tweets, and tossed-off asides — highlights the Manichaean view that 
seems to inform his beliefs and actions. (Manichaeanism – Damn! Is it more elite 
to define it or not to? — was a philosophy that divided the world into good and evil.) 
So with a bow to Roget, herewith:
A TRUMP THESAURUS
Part 1
good (adj.) terrific, beautiful, amazing, smart, tremendous, uge, big league
(aka bigly), first, best, most, greatest, very, very good, wonderful, 
unbelievable, like never before
(noun) tough talk, Wikileaks, wall
(pronoun) I, me, my (see above: best, most, greatest)
Part 2
bad (adj) disgusting, sad, disgraceful, dishonest, terrible, unfair, stupid, 
not funny, overrated, ugly, so-called, phony
(noun) loser, really bad dudes, radical Islamic terrorists, leakers, 
fake news, failing New York Times
I was all set to say there is no Part 3 when I came across this explication 
of Trump’s vocabulary at a recent press conference:
military operation (adj) stepped-up deportation of undocumented immigrants, 
emphatically not having anything to do with the military. “The president was 
using that as an adjective. It’s being done with precision and in a manner 
in which it’s being done very, very clearly” (Sean Spicer).