Words & Phrases We Can Do Without

Whatever is happening, Trump is not "testing" anything

One of legacy media’s common refrains—“Trump is testing the limits of [fill in the blank]”—is among the most revealing (about the media imploying it, that is). The phrase reminds us that obfuscation and evasion, not truth-telling, are driving their approach to covering Trump 2.0.

When corporate and billionaire media suggest that Donald Trump is testing the limits of the Constitution or executive authority or congressional Republicans’ self-debasement, one conjures up a vision of deliberate inquiry. It assumes a level of intentional, rational analysis, a set of intellectual skills Trump has never demonstrated. Worse, the deceptive phrasing gives one the false impression that Trump would retreat if the “tested” scheme did not work or proved unnecessary (or if courts disallowed it). But it is not a “test,” if he plunges forward regardless of facts, deterrents, public reaction, or nettlesome lower court decisions.

Trump is not “testing” the limits of executive power in trying to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook. He is blasting through the plain letter of the law, violating the bipartisan consensus that the central bank should be insulated against political pressure, and putting at risk our economy so he can force the Fed to cover for his failures (i.e. fiscal and trade policies that are driving the economy into a ditch). “Testing” makes it sound so much more benign, which obviously is the point. Such language normalizes and justifies (Just testing!) his serial assaults on the Constitution and rejection of reality.

Likewise, media spinners of conventional wisdom prattle on that Trump is taking us into “uncharted” territory or waters. They would have us imagine he is a daring explorer seeking to pursue new adventures that predecessors lacked the courage to do. No one proposes the accurate alternative: that he is a crazed nihilist bent on blowing up legal, moral, and political norms that no predecessor had the galling disrespect to challenge.

We also hear the frequent observation that Trump is advancing an “unprecedented” argument or position (Tren de Aragua is a nation for purposes of the Alien Enemies Act! His toady’s baseless accusation against a Fed governor is “cause” for firing a Federal Reserve governor!), as if no one as clever as he ever devised a theory of the Constitution that would allow him to do whatever he pleases. Directly informing Americans that such an argument is preposterous, indicative of someone with contempt for language and the courts, is apparently verboten.

These lame weasel words seem designed to avoid saying the obvious: This wannabe dictator has been gleefully shredding the Constitution; he is the Framers’ worst nightmare and the sort of autocratic figure “conservatives” used to denounce (and prepared to arm themselves against).

The cowed corporate media (the same that has paid off Trump with phony settlements, turned themselves inside-out to curry favor with the Dear Leader, and studiously avoided thorough investigations into his physical and mental decline) resort to these expressions in order to duck the most important issue of our time. They appear deathly afraid to acknowledge that we are turning into a police state. We should stop expecting this faction of the media to recognize that democracy is being imperiled by the unending attacks on the rule of law, American values, and our constitutional structure.

To normalize Trump means cringing media outlets need not “take sides” or flatly speak the truth. They can continue the pretense that this is a president like any other president. They can keep access to newsmakers and insist they are neutral in the fight between democracy and authoritarianism.

That does not mean the rest of us have to tiptoe around the truth. In citizens’ interactions with politicians, Democratic politicians’ speeches and messaging, and across independent media, clear-eyed Americans can lay out exactly what is happening.

This is not simply a matter of linguistic hygiene. If we soft-pedal Trump’s reign we wind up habituating the public to dictatorship. As political scientist Daniel Ziblatt (one of a group of academics who has consistently sounded the alarm that we are falling into authoritarianism) explains:

Democracy rarely dies in a single moment. It is chipped away via abdication: rationalizations and compromises as those with power and influence tell themselves that yielding just a little ground will keep them safe or that finding common ground with a disrupter is more practical than standing against him.

Trump is not Hitler (although he increasingly ruminates that others want a dictator), but the United States increasingly looks an awful lot like the Weimar Republic, which, Ziblatt points out, provides us with the “enduring lesson … [that] extremism never triumphs on its own.” He argues that a dictatorship “succeeds because others enable it—because of their ambition, because of their fear, or because they misjudge the dangers of small concessions.” And they minimize the consequences that flow from cocooning a dictator in the language of routine politics.

In the end, many Trump enablers—including cowering press outlets—may be crushed by the dictators’ boot, but their demise is not nearly as tragic as the suffering inflicted on the most vulnerable people, i.e., those who lack the resources and power of toady politicians, multi-national corporations, or giant media conglomerates.

So please, let’s dispense with piffle (“testing,” “uncharted,” “unprecedented”) and instead speak bluntly:

Trump is trashing our Constitution with the expectation that the Supreme Court’s MAGA majority will let him (as it has done every step of the way), and the Republican quislings will cover for him.

In resisting linguistic sloth and denouncing gaslighting, American can impede Trump’s dictatorial ambition. Whether we collectively confront MAGA politicians, feeble media outlets, and our fellow citizens with searing clarity will be the real “test” for our democracy.