Title : Trump's Mount Rushmore speech came on too late for me, but...
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Trump's Mount Rushmore speech came on too late for me, but...
... I've got the transcript, and I'm going to live-blog my reading of it. I'm fixing punctuation as I go and adding boldface:There could be no better place to celebrate America’s independence than beneath this magnificent, incredible, majestic mountain and monument to the greatest Americans who have ever lived.Somebody went heavy on the alliteration, but "incredible" sneaked in there. He's on the side of the monuments, not the destroyers of monuments.
The superlative — "the greatest Americans who have ever lived" — is a provocation. Not only is he defending these 4 men against the recent attacks, He's saying they are greater than every other American in history — greater than Frederick Douglass, greater than Harriet Tubman, greater than all of them. He didn't have to say the greatest. He could have said "among the greatest."
It would mean something just to call them "great" at all and not to qualify it with something like, though they did not escape the moral failings characteristic of their time. But he went big. He put the 4 above everyone else, which is the message of the mountain.
Today we pay tribute to the exceptional lives and extraordinary legacies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt.He's got the great men on his side, not like those people who want to tear down statues of all of them.
I am here as your president to proclaim before the country and before the world, this monument will never be desecrated, these heroes will never be defamed, their legacy will never ever be destroyed, their achievements will never be forgotten, and Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom.That's big! Very grand. Very much a stand against the protesters and rioters... without mentioning them. This is hyperbole, because Trump cannot protect the monument forever, and indeed, an understanding of geology would tell you that it's impossible for the monument to stand forever as an eternal tribute.
But he's not promising. He's proclaiming. I think of the proclamation on the plinth of Ozymandias. You can proclaim it is eternal, but that doesn't make it eternal. I'm going to live forever! I'm going to learn how to fly! Sing it joyously, but you're still going to die some day.
It's rhetoric. I'm not saying it's bad. It's in the style of Churchill — "never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in" — and it's understood emotionally, not literally.
We gather tonight to herald the most important day in the history of nations, July 4th, 1776. At those words, every American heart should swell with pride, every American family should cheer with delight, and every American patriot should be filled with joy because each of you lives in the most magnificent country in the history of the world and it will soon be greater than ever before.He's telling us how we should feel: good, very, very good. Obviously, there are a lot of people who feel very bad about America. But they should feel good. He's not acknowledging all their arguments and complaints. It's as if those people are just not understanding what is true: America is great.
Our founders launched not only a revolution in government, but a revolution in the pursuit of justice, equality, liberty, and prosperity. No nation has done more to advance the human condition than the United States of America and no people have done more to promote human progress than the citizens of our great nation.The argument for greatness is not that we are perfect, but look how far we've come.
It was all made possible by the courage of 56 patriots who gathered in Philadelphia 244 years ago and signed the Declaration of Independence. They enshrined a divine truth that changed the world forever when they said, “All men are created equal.” These immortal words set in motion the unstoppable march of freedom. Our founders boldly declared that we are all endowed with the same divine rights, given us by our Creator in Heaven, and that which God has given us, we will allow no one ever to take away — ever.There's "ever" again — and in connection with God and "divine truth." This is a very lofty paragraph. And, again, the idea isn't that we're complacent about existing greatness. It's a process: America "will soon be greater than ever before," there's been so much "progress," it's a march forward that was "set in motion" and is "unstoppable."
1776 represented the culmination of thousands of years of Western civilization and the triumph of not only spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason.To some, the term "Western civilization" is a provocation. To some, the "triumph of... wisdom, philosophy, and reason" sounds like patriarchy and racism.
And yet, as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure. Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.He's combining the protesters and the critics of American values with the worst of the rioters. They're one big ugly glob, and they don't simply want to assist in this process of perfecting America, going on the "unstoppable march of freedom." They only want to destroy — to "wipe out" and "erase."
It's easy to lump these people together. I remember when some Americans who wanted to defend monuments showed up in Charlottesville at the same time as some very conspicuous Nazis, and Trump called the non-Nazi subsection of the pro-monument protesters "very fine people." Anti-Trumpists typically lump them all together and insist on saying that Trump called Nazis "very fine people." Trump is returning the favor.
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