The Problem of Only a Handful

and the literal versus the serious

My original purpose in starting a blog six years ago was to carve out my own space for dialogue and civil disagreement given the wide range of conflicting views and values in our society. But since none of my first blog posts tackled any specific issue head-on (were focused on my concerns for fostering equanimity, mutual understanding, and spiritual balance) I ended up feeling caught in a bind. As I gained a few subscribers I felt an obligation to keep things apolitical because it seemed that’s likely what they signed up for and it felt like I’d be doing a bait-and-switch if I suddenly pivoted to political and culture war topics. So, with a couple exceptions, I’ve kept my (rampant) political thoughts to myself for fear that I would disappoint readers and (not gonna lie) that my already small audience would shrink.

Nothing like fear to keep one thinking small, right?

But if the end result is that I’m barely writing at all, what’s the point of having the blog?

Also, in an encouraging but ironic twist (maybe a message from the universe? Fate? God?) my most recent post, which is the closest I’ve come to tackling a current events topic head-on, received the most engagement out of the gate of any post I’ve written and it brought in new subscribers while losing me none. Which means maybe there’s hope that my readers won’t feel betrayed by a pivot towards the political. Because we’re living in disconcertingly interesting times and I have thoughts to share. In this case, about the approaching election and the disconnect in the electorate.

So, in that vein, this exchange between J.D. Vance and ABC’s Martha Raddatz on the Sunday 10/13 show of This Week was making the social media rounds a few days ago (click here to watch):

MARTHA RADDATZ: Aurora, in Colorado, where Trump said the city had been invaded and conquered by Venezuelan gangs. The Republican mayor of the city said flatly, the city and state have not been taken over or invaded or occupied by migrant gangs.

So, do you support Donald Trump making those claims that the Republican mayor says were grossly exaggerated and have hurt the city's identity and sense of safety? …[H]e's making these statements that the mayor is flat out disputing.

SEN. JD VANCE: Well, Martha, you just said the mayor said they were exaggerated.

RADDATZ: Grossly exaggerated.

VANCE: That means there's got to be some element of truth here and, of course, President Trump was actually in Aurora, Colorado, talking to people on the ground and what we're hearing, of course, Martha, is that people are terrified by what has happened with some of these Venezuelan gangs.

RADDATZ: Senator Vance, I’m going to stop you because I know exactly what happened. I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes and the mayor said our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns. A handful of problems.

VANCE: Only—Martha, do you hear yourself?—only a “handful” of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris's open border? Americans are so fed up with what's going on and they have every right to be and I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting because you seem to be more focused with nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs.

I worry so much more about that problem than anything else here. We've got to get American communities in a safe space again. And unfortunately, when you let people in by the millions, most of whom are unvetted, most of whom you don't know who they really are, you're going to have problems like this. Kamala Harris’s 94 executive orders that undid Donald Trump's successful border policies, we knew this stuff would happen.

They bragged about opening the border and now we have the consequences and we're living with it. We can do so much better, but frankly, we're not going to do better, Martha, unless Donald Trump calls this stuff out. I’m glad that he did.

RADDATZ: Okay. Let's—let's just—let's just end that with they did not invade or take over the city as Donald Trump said.

This slice of of their feisty interview grabbed my attention because I think it illustrates, exceptionally well, the profound disconnect between Trump critics and Trump supporters, going all the way back to the 2016 election. I remember hearing then that those who dislike Trump “take him literally but not seriously,” while those who support him “take him seriously but not literally.” Judging by this clip, that’s still very true. And I think it’s important to dig into because it signals to me why Democrats are likely to lose on November 5th.

Martha Raddatz clearly takes Donald Trump literally but not seriously—by “not seriously” I mean, she shows zero interest in why he represents roughly half the electorate. She centers her interview entirely on the inaccuracy of Trump’s overblown rhetoric rather than focusing on the actual problem he was addressing: the fact that a vicious criminal gang from Venezuela has been allowed to infiltrate and organize inside America’s borders and begun victimizing Americans in their own homes.

Vance, of course, takes Trump seriously but not literally. He immediately acknowledges that Trump indeed exaggerated (“grossly exaggerated” Raddatz corrects) but hones in on the central concern Trump was speaking to: the justifiable fears of the Aurora citizens who have lost their peace and safety to these gangs. Raddatz, however, interrupts to re-direct him back to Trump’s specific wording, fact-checking the “invaded the city” remark to insist it was demonstrably false because in reality it was a handful of apartment complexes that were taken.

To Raddatz, the story worth discussing is Trump’s misleading hyperbole describing the problem. To Raddatz, the real concern is that people might take Trump as literally as she does and form an incorrect understanding of the scale of Venezuelan gang violence in Colorado. To Raddatz, the key piece of information for Americans to understand is that scale: only a handful of apartment complexes in Aurora have been invaded and conquered. Not the whole city. Next topic!

One can only wonder what her point might have been if her home was among that handful.

Indeed, what’s striking is that when Vance calls her out for “nitpicking” Trump’s language, for showing obsessive concern about his words rather than the fact that any American apartment complexes are under control of Third World criminal gangs, she doesn’t back down. She doesn’t take even a moment to acknowledge the terrifying plight of those residents or their threatened or actual victimization. She expresses no recognition of them at all, and no sympathy. Her sole focus is on how inaccurately Donald Trump portrayed the situation and on correcting the record. As if that is the singular newsworthy angle on the story—the socially, culturally, morally compelling issue at hand.

And that’s why I think Donald Trump will win. This meme kinda says it all:

The Democrat leadership, the Establishment political class both Left and Right, and their water-carriers like Raddatz in the mainstream media have profoundly lost the plot. They’ve lost touch with the reality and concerns of too many average Americans. They take Trump so literally they cannot take him seriously, and all their energy thus goes to decrying him as simultaneously a demagogue and a clown. They fail to see how he can possibly be conceived a worthy leader by anyone because they a cannot hear beyond his hyperbole to recognize the heart of the concerns to which he speaks.

Yet it’s that heart that Trump’s voter base does hear. And they take him seriously and trust him because he clearly recognizes their reality and addresses directly the difficult issues they see and care about. On top of that, for growing numbers of American voters, even outside the growing MAGA base, there is a real yearning to return our nation to its traditional values of moral responsibility, civic accountability, and economic prosperity. To restore the dream that once made us an inspiration to the world, that “shining City on the Hill.” The Harris/Walz yard signs everywhere declaring “We’re not going back” signal a threat more than a promise to many voters, MAGA and otherwise. They are proof the Democrat ticket does not see, much less value, the concerns, hopes, or vision shared by so many Americans.

Now, let me pause here to point out that I, being someone who prizes honest and precise language, who loves to parse words and use them clearly and correctly, have never liked Trump as an orator. In fact, his communication style—wandering, circular, overly simplistic and aggravatingly imprecise—drives me flipping nuts and so I generally avoid listening to him. (Full disclosure: my aversion may also be chagrin that two of his annoying habits are also mine—failing to finish sentences and speaking tangentially.) But I’ve tortured myself just often enough to have recognized something that seems invisible to his haters (not a word I throw around, but that’s precisely the vibe his most committed “detractors” give off).

His flamboyant, hyperbolic, at times obnoxious rhetoric is not about communicating objectively accurate information. His heavy reliance on preposterous exaggerations is not aimed at convincing listeners that lies are truth, at duping them into believing blatant falsehoods. And his supporters know this, which is exactly why they do not take him literally. They recognize that he speaks to his crowds not like a sophisticated leader with a polished message, but like he’s hanging out in their living room shooting the shit, commiserating with their complaints. They hear his flagrant exaggerations for the hyperbole they are because they know that most people in casual conversation lean on inexact language and overstatements to make a point (I’m so hungry I could eat a horse!—idiomatic, I know, but . . . you catch my drift). No one believes such statements are measurably true, yet everyone understands exactly what they mean.

And I think that’s where the disconnect arises.

Judging by their objections, his critics seem unable to listen to him as anything other than a political actor and they know that politicians speak with carefully curated messages in precise language, no matter how offhand their speech may be styled. Thus they hear Trump only as an inveterate liar and master manipulator—Pinnochio on steroids, Hitler 2.0. They seem profoundly oblivious to the most obvious truth of the man: Trump fundamentally is not a politician. He’s not even attempting to seem like one.

Trump, to his core, is a salesman. A marketing guy. His M.O. is reading the room and pitching to the mood to make the deal, clinch the sale. Crucially, this means that when he tells a crowd that Venezuelan gangs have invaded and conquered Aurora he is not trying to make a factual claim. He is not trying to objectively inform voters. He’s grabbing phrases that give voice to the genuine sentiment so many concerned citizens already share: the sense that the Biden/Harris administration’s border policies have created an out-of-control situation that is dangerous, threatening, and destructive to the wellbeing of average Americans. He is putting his rhetorical finger on a legitimate anxiety among voters that’s inspired by the government’s misplaced priorities and its unresponsiveness to their concerns.

One final related misjudgment I see from Trump’s critics is their seeming presumption that his supporters are simpletons, too unsophisticated or blindly sycophantic to recognize Trump is speaking non-factually. Maybe it’s because of how often clapping and cheering erupts when Trump says something outrageous; I’ll grant the madness of crowds is a genuine thing (though it cuts both ways across our political divide). But the mainstream of voters I know who are willing to support Trump are not stupid, easily-led people. They are highly informed, thoughtful, caring and engaged individuals who don’t need the mainstream media or Uniparty elites “fact-checking” the Orange Tyrant for them. They are capable all on their own of forming reasonable, reality-based opinions about Trump and anything he says. In fact, many have their own criticisms of him, personal reservations about him, even though they’re willing to ultimately pull the lever for him. But none of them need Blue America stepping in as interpreter and arbiter of the his speech.

All of which brings me to the most telling—and likely consequential—difference I see between Trump and his opponents: his instinctive trust in the intelligence and decency of everyday Americans, versus their obvious distrust. The True Believers of the postmodern Left have for so long preached that only their own vision of humanity is the humane and righteous one, that love and compassion are properly definable only by their own radical values, that they regard anyone who does not bend a knee at their cultural altars to be unworthy of their confidence or respect—a likely bigot, a probable deplorable. Unfortunately for them, those unwashed masses may well prove to be the larger swath of the electorate.

We shall see in a few short weeks.