From my childhood days as a reader through my adult years making a living as a writer and editor, I have loved words. Revered them. Valued them for their sound as well as their duty to convey meanings as precisely as possible.
That’s why I always dread the political season’s arrival. I know the word abusers are coming to blur, bend and distort, and just generally muddy the waters.
Take Gauleiter Trump at a press conference last week who more than once spoke of what he would do during his reign. Reign? Not “term?” Reign connotes royalty and what kings do, and we fought a war back in 1776 to end all that. Slip of the tongue? Or preparing us for things to come?
More egregious in the presser was King Donald repeating his stump-speech charge that “Mexico and China are taking our jobs.” He cited Ford, Nabisco and Apple among others as the hapless pawns. (Note that verb: “take.”) Interestingly, the following day, Chris Collins of New York’s 27th Congressional District, a Republican and a supporter of Trump, clarified his master’s verb; he said Mexico and China “stole” those jobs. Mystery misdemeanor upped to a felony!
Okay. We’re left to our own devices to fill out the narrative. Here’s mine for the Grand Theft Auto caper: El Chapo escapes jail...again; inspired by the spirit of Poncho Villa, he rounds-up a legion of disgruntled federales; together they mix in with the common rapists and drug peddlers in crossing the border and head for 1 American Road, Dearborn, Michigan, 42126; there they bust into a Board Meeting where they gag and tie-up Ford’s corporate board members, while El Chapo triumphantly tells them, “We’re ladrones and we’re here to take your Chevies;” the next few days they round up the employees and machines, strap them to their burros, and head south; it is a long and arduous slog to Monterey, but they manage because their calves are as big as cantaloupes. Successful heist. That’s how I see it.
I don’t doubt that King Donald already has plans to liberate Ford and its people from the sunny land below the Rio Grand...probably before he builds his wall. Is China next?