The Rise of Anti-Semantics

 Creative Commons Licensed Image "Hillary Clinton - Caricature" by Donkey Hotey. Some rights reserved.

And what do I think of Hillary’s use of the word “deplorable,” which I gather has become a major issue in a campaign filled with such major issues as –well, I can’t think of any right now, other than email depravity?

Her off-hand remark at a fund raiser that half of Trump’s supporters could be put in a basket of deplorables –lumping together all the racists, sexists, homophobics, xenophobics, Islamophobics who make up half of the Trump base –is undoubtedly offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. How deplorable can you get?

It might also seem objectionable for Trump to have schlonged a Hillary who should have been at home quaffing chicken soup, instead of out shaking the tin can. If not deplorable, it at least wasn’t nice.

It’s always lamentable, loathsome, low down, a dirty crying shame to coalesce disparate groups and then divide them in half or quarters, whatever political calculus she uses in the abacus of her political brain to indiscriminately smear with gross generalistics.

I myself have been known to play those dirty tricks on my readers, making deplorable generalizations.

Moi?

Yes, I have made that egregious error as a pundit in commenting on the 11 million people who voted for the winning candidate in the primaries.

Just because they supported a candidate who seems to have been deliberately appealing to racial, religious and ethnic bigots was no reason to call his followers idiots. I now withdraw the generalistic.

Actually, only 47% of them are idiots.

A political idiot by my admittedly idiosyncratic definition is a person who accepts a lie as a truth.

That’s bad enough, but a real idiot is a person who continues to treat a lie as gospel, even when presented with the facts debunking the lie.

I’m talking about the true facts, as we have to say in this age of social media when anything appearing on Twitter or Facebook, the most reliable sources of information for many, is true, ipso facto. Why else would it be on social media?

I can understand the plight of the 47%, who should be sorting out his latest lies from earlier lies. They are not listening, not understanding the basic difference between the truth and a lie or just being overwhelming by the multiplicity.

There have always been liars in political campaigns. Telling lies is as American as apple pie and vanilla ice cream. Campaign promises? Wink-wink nudge-nudge.

But there has never been a candidate who can tell so many lies in a single mouthful. As it has been said, if his mouth is open he is lying.

The tendency to say “hold on a minute,” throw up your hands or just throw up, is blown away by the sheer number of untruths. Trump is a world-class liar. Believe me. Awesome.

An absolute idiot, if I may continue denouncing my act of deplorability, is a voter who when apprised of the facts, concludes the fact-checker or media in general are lying, out to get their man. “Truth,” as the late psychiatrist Dr. Donald Kaplan first said, “ is the last refuge of scoundrels.”

When am I going to wake up, stop being such a dinosaur, and accept the reality of social media? Can 11 million tweets be wrong?

And while I’m getting deplorable things off my chest and computers, I regret having implied the Republican candidate is off his rocker.

I have no more certitude for suggesting that Trump is mentally- challenged than the Trump doctor who in five minutes in the back of a cab wrote that his patient is in the greatest shape of any president in history. Why, he could win the 2016 IFBBF (International Federation of Body Building and Fitness) world classic in Spain, especially in the physique and bikini competition.

I had no right calling the campaign the political equivalent of Crazy Eddie ‘s fraudulent deals, as they used to say in the local commercials were ABSOLUTELY INSANE.

It also was deplorable of my suggesting that his being a New Yorker and with the medical benefits from his last gig at NBC, he might be able to get into the prison wing of Bellevue, where “Law & Order: SVU” puts all the total nut jobs.

With six weeks of the campaign remaining, it may be too early to nominate who is the most deplorable, if not deportable. But a word of advice for the health -challenged candidate:

Hillary, don’t put all your yeggs in the same basket.

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Marvin Kitman
Sept. 14, 2016