Like many on the liberal democratic wing of politics, I believed the assurances of many American political experts that Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination would fizzle out when “real voting in real primaries” began. I am not going to underestimate Trump again.
Plato argued that when democracy has fully developed, a would-be tyrantwould make his move by “taking over a particularly obedient mob” and attacking his wealthy peers as corrupt. Eventually, the tyrant stands alone, promising to cut through the paralysis of democratic compromise. “Democracy passes into despotism.”
It is as though Trump is offering downtrodden citizens a kind of relief from democracy’s endless insecurities. He pledges, above all, to take on the increasingly despised elites.
In 2008, Sarah Palin emerged in the Republican party as proof that an outsider, tailor-made for reality television and proud of her own ignorance about the world, could triumph in this new era. It turned out she was the John the Baptist for the true messiah of conservative populism, Trump, waiting patiently for his time to come.
Despite his immense wealth, Trump has always cultivated a common touch. He lived the rich man’s life most working men dreamt of without sacrificing a way of talking about the world that resonated with those labouring on the construction sites he regularly toured. He assiduously cultivated this image and took to reality TV as a natural.
Donald Trump is not just another demented politician of the far right. He is a catastrophe waiting to happen
In the emotional fervour of generating a democratic mass movement, he has fostered a new way of conducting politics. The most powerful engine to get this movement off the ground and entrenching it has been his ability to evoke hatred. Trump launched his campaign by calling undocumented Mexican immigrants a population largely of rapists and murderers. He moved on to attacking Muslims, both at home and abroad. He added to these enemies the Republican establishment itself. In his response to each of these three enemies, as he saw them, his threat of blunt coercion is what makes Trump so uniquely dangerous in the history of American politics.
How has he done it?
Trump’s cleverest trick is to sound stupid. He uses the simple language of a 10-year-old to connect with the blue-collar dispossessed in America. The political rules that Trump follows are ‘Attack, attack, attack. Never defend. Admit nothing, deny everything. Make counter-accusations’.
But Trump’s essential success lies in his use of language. In 1930, the English linguist, C.K. Ogden, invented a pared down, simplified form of language as a tool for teaching English as a second tongue. His “Basic English” contained a vocabulary of just 850 words, 18 verbs and a radically reduced grammar. Anyone with a grasp of Basic English would be able to understand someone else with the same rudimentary skills.
In 1933, H.G. Wells, horrified by Ogden’s idea, wrote a novel in which he depicted a totalitarian government ruling a world in which Basic English becomes the global lingua franca. Trump has forged his own Basic English, a blunt, minimalist, idiomatic form of speech that is comprehensible to any American with the educational level of the average 10-year-old. ‘Trump-speak’ appals his critics, delights his supporters with its directness, and represents one of the keys to his successful bid for the Republican nomination.
Study how Trump expresses himself. He uses short words, in short sentences, with minimal grammatical complexity. He entirely rejects the rhetorical and flowery flourishes of most campaigning politicians. His sentences are sometimes as short as five words and seldom more than 15.
The most important word comes at the end of the sentence, delivered as a series of often unconnected, punchlines. A subject, a verb and usually a direct object. The effect is punchy and instantly intelligible. “Get tough with China and Mexico, which are killing us!” “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country.” “Nothing works. Everybody wins except us. We’re not going to lose. We are going to start winning again. And we’re going to win bigly(sic)”.
His favourite word is “I”. His fourth favourite is “Trump.” Eight out of 13 most-used words are monosyllables. He favours the matey phrases common to much informal American speech: “You know what...”, “Lemme tell you…”. He avoids qualifying phrases and sub-clauses and relies heavily on emphasis (“very”, “great”, “totally”). He constantly uses invective for effect and to bully his opposition (“losers”, “total losers”, “dummy”, “haters”, “idiots”, “morons”, “stupid”).
Trump’s use of words is the most verbally uncomplicated ever employed by a presidential candidate in modern times. Where George W. Bush wrestled with the language and frequently lost, Trump chops it into easily digestible lumps.
Using the Flesch-Kincaid test, invented by the US Navy to assess readability, where a text is run through an algorithm measuring syllables, words and sentence construction to assign it a level equivalent to school grades, Trump’s language is measured in the fourth grade (age nine/10). Hillary Clinton ranked in the eighth grade (aged 13/14). By contrast, John F. Kennedy’s moon-shot speech is high school graduation level and George Washington’s farewell address of 1796 was assessed as graduate degree level.
We may recoil from Trump’s reductive way of speaking but for millions of Americans the very bluntness and simplicity of his speeches are the bedrock of his appeal. Trump speaks the language of the blue-collar man in the bar. The plain-spoken, white working-class vernacular of pent-up resentment that makes his listeners feel they are being addressed by someone trustworthy. His fragmented style of delivery appears authentic and unrehearsed. It is neither.
No one needs a dictionary to understand Trump. That is one of his greatest assets. A way to win “bigly” and he knows it. “I know words. I have the best words,” he said recently. “But there is no better word than stupid.”
Trump’s unique brand of Basic English may sound stupid to some but it is highly effective and carefully calculated. Whereas Clinton’s statements – like those of most experienced politicians – are careful and grammatically precise, the very sophistication of her language is alienating to many Americans.
It is obvious that in presidential campaigns, as in real life, bluster and invective can only get you so far. Eventually, there has to be substance. Policy positions. A statesmanlike gravitas.
But to pin one’s hope on this as the way of avoiding the disaster that a Trump presidency would surely bring is to misunderstand the nature of his presidential bid. The bid cannot be traditional in any way.
The way he galvanises his support cannot be conventional in any area.
If it is, it dies. He will not be able to compete because his core supporters will lose interest. He can win only by spitting in the faces of the establishment and the intelligentsia all the way to November’s election.
As his acceptance speech in Cleveland showed last week, the people his campaign must excite, the emotions it must unleash, the atmosphere it must create do not come from the normal rule-book. He knows this and uses words accordingly.
Trump is not just another demented politician of the far right.
In terms of our liberal democracy and the American constitutional order, he is a catastrophe waiting to happen. We should be very afraid.