Words For Their Words…

Words describing evilly clever rhetoric that’s being adopted and trumpeted by acolytes of a former U.S. president, the one whose name is encompassed in the word ‘trumpeted’… what might the words for evilly clever rhetoric be?

These words: ‘Communication atrocities?’

‘Atrocities,’ because when inflammatory rhetoric stirs folks up, they sometimes inflict real, sometimes ugly, atrocities on other folks. On innocent people.

Remember when the former president urged supporters to “fight like hell,” last January 6th? And they did, when they marched on the U.S. Capitol.

Who can forget seeing a Capitol police officer being crushed, as the former president’s followers were slamming a door into his chest and his arms? Who can forget the officer screaming for help?

And the scenes of officers being beaten with fists and poles and being sprayed with chemicals.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson once said immigrants would make the country “poorer and dirtier.” And hordes of men online once harassed and bullied a Teen Vogue contributor, because of something Carlson had said.

The Boston Globe once described what happened to a 58-year-old Latino man who was ambushed by two white men as he slept: “His face was soaked, apparently with urine, his nose broken, his chest and arms battered. “Witnesses said two brothers, who were arrested, pummeled him with their fists and a metal pole before walking away laughing. One of the attackers told police he was inspired by Trump. ‘Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,’” he said.

Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert has denigrated Muslim representatives who are serving, with her, in Congress.

Thinking about rhetoric (communication atrocities?), these are just a few things to be thinking about.