But every dot was connected
Hoooooooooo-boy.
Trump: I don’t think I’ve ever said this before. So we do these rallies. They’re massive rallies. Everybody loves, everybody stays till the end. By the way, you know, when she said that, well, your rallies people leave. Honestly, nobody does. And if I saw them leaving, I’d say, and ladies and gentlemen make America great again and I’d get the hell out, ok? Because I don’t want people leaving. But I do have to say so I give these long sometimes very complex sentences and paragraphs but they all come together. I do it a lot. I do it with raising cane. That story. I do it with the story on the catapults on the aircraft carriers. I do it with a lot of different stories. When I mentioned Doctor Hannibal Lecter. I’m using that as an example of people that are coming in from Silence of the Lambs. I use it. They say it’s terrible. So they say so I’ll give this long complex area for instance that I talked about a lot of different territory… You know, for a town hall, there’s a lot of people but the fake news likes to say, the fake news likes to say, oh, he was rambling. No, no, that’s not rambling. That’s genius. When you can connect the dots. Now, now, Sarah, if you couldn’t connect the dots, you got a problem. But every dot was connected and many stories were told in that little paragraph
I listened to the whole thing to confirm that he really did say “When I mentioned Doctor Hannibal Lecter. I’m using that as an example of people that are coming in from Silence of the Lambs.” He really did.
Note the “I do it with a lot of different stories.” He’s one of those guys – the ones who tell stories – the ones who think they have a vast mental archive of fabulous stories, and who pin you down and bore you with them every chance they get. Run from those guys. Head for the hills. Stories are what they have instead of thinking.
His hand gestures are odd. I’m going to call that one the ‘snake charmer.’
Biblical reference — it’s actually ‘raising Cain.’ Probably a White Nationalist dogwhistle.
And, in this case, policy.
… Are 90s movies the only stories he remembers?
twiliter @ 2 – yes but this is Trump, remember. Who the hell knows what he thinks he means by “raising cane” or Cain or kane or cayn or……..you know. Could be sugar cane. Could be a vast billowing field of walking canes. Who knows?
Some type of “genius” that’s indecipherable, but looks a lot like incoherent babbling? I don’t know (and probably don’t want to).
He’s probably talking about the 1992 Brian de Palma movie “Raising Cain”, since movies are all he knows.
That, but “reality” TV, and “pro” wrestling. “Ratings!” GIGO
There are, perhaps, two fundamental ways that humans understand things
– tell me a story
– show me a picture
Republicans have always communicated in stories. Stories are accessible, and relatable, and compelling; far more so than, say, policy proposals or white papers. This is one reason that Republicans keep getting the votes of people whose interests they oppose: they tell them stories that they want to hear.
Even more powerful than stories are keywords or tropes: short phrases or words that have come to stand for a whole story. Willie Horton. There’s a bear in the woods. They’re eating the dogs.
One advantage of speaking in tropes is that they serve as dog whistles: they give the speaker plausible deniability if they later want to disavow the substance of the story.
An even bigger advantage is that the use of keywords validates the story. When a single word or phrase evokes a whole story, the listener tends to accept that story uncritically–after all, it’s a story that they already knew. (If they didn’t already know the story then the keyword wouldn’t mean anything to them.)
The Republicans’ problem is that–for whatever reason–they aren’t getting much traction with their stories right now. Back in the day, people really were afraid of communist subversion, but no one is taking the Haitians-eating-dogs thing seriously. Even the boy who was killed by an unlicensed immigrant driver is seen as a tragedy, not the vanguard of an invasion.
Trump’s problem is that he can not, in fact, connect the dots any more. Through some combination of indiscipline, desperation, and dementia, his parole has fallen below the minimum threshold necessary to generate the keywords and sequence the stories. Even his supporters are sitting there and thinking, WTF? Or just getting bored and leaving. (Boredom being a sure sign that Trump is no longer evoking interesting stories in their minds.)shows the listener that this is a story that the listener already knew–already knew to be true–not just something that the speaker made up on the spot
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I saw a presentation on U2b recently that claimed the feature that cult leaders have most in common with each other is verbosity.
Whoever vomits the most words in the shortest amount of time wins, and he-she doesn’t have to make sense.