Language gaps, extension of remarks

Just for the record, I need to add  to the list of words needed to discuss Trump, especially in view of Helsinki:

groveling

credulous

servile

lackey

abject

cringing

abased

inept

gullible

dupe

Needed: not namecalling, not hyperbolic; evidenced attributes. Without language like this, you cannot get Trump right, and we can’t defend ourselves against him.

Author: Michael O'Hare

Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, Michael O'Hare was raised in New York City and trained at Harvard as an architect and structural engineer. Diverted from an honest career designing buildings by the offer of a job in which he could think about anything he wanted to and spend his time with very smart and curious young people, he fell among economists and such like, and continues to benefit from their generosity with on-the-job social science training. He has followed the process and principles of design into "nonphysical environments" such as production processes in organizations, regulation, and information management and published a variety of research in environmental policy, government policy towards the arts, and management, with special interests in energy, facility siting, information and perceptions in public choice and work environments, and policy design. His current research is focused on transportation biofuels and their effects on global land use, food security, and international trade; regulatory policy in the face of scientific uncertainty; and, after a three-decade hiatus, on NIMBY conflicts afflicting high speed rail right-of-way and nuclear waste disposal sites. He is also a regular writer on pedagogy, especially teaching in professional education, and co-edited the "Curriculum and Case Notes" section of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Between faculty appointments at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, he was director of policy analysis at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. He has had visiting appointments at Università Bocconi in Milan and the National University of Singapore and teaches regularly in the Goldman School's executive (mid-career) programs. At GSPP, O'Hare has taught a studio course in Program and Policy Design, Arts and Cultural Policy, Public Management, the pedagogy course for graduate student instructors, Quantitative Methods, Environmental Policy, and the introduction to public policy for its undergraduate minor, which he supervises. Generally, he considers himself the school's resident expert in any subject in which there is no such thing as real expertise (a recent project concerned the governance and design of California county fairs), but is secure in the distinction of being the only faculty member with a metal lathe in his basement and a 4×5 Ebony view camera. At the moment, he would rather be making something with his hands than writing this blurb.

20 thoughts on “Language gaps, extension of remarks”

  1. Cheer up. I think that Mueller fellow is really doing a good job. Mind you, how weird is it to see the GOP go after the FBI? If I took these things as seriously as I maybe should, I guess I’d be upset. Still … I think at sooooome point, the actual conservatives are going to find a spine. Even just to save their bacon, don’t they have to, at some point? I do not think this is my mess to clean up.

  2. Matthew Yglesias applies a dirty word to Trump: Mercantilist

    AFAIK, Mercantilism is a zero-sum game where one country dominates trade is all sectors it engages in.

    So Trump see Europe as a foe, but Russia as a competitor in one area only: fossil fuel. Hence he is infuriated when a NATO country like Germany buys fossil fuel from Russia. The Nord Stream pipeline was the only area where he seemed to differ from Putin.

    So Trumpism is "Hell, what do we care what they do, as long as they make up rich". Let Russia dominate Europe, and China dominate Asia, as long as they all buy American. Very 18th & early 19th Century. The British did not care who ruled China as long as they bought opium. Trump cannot firmly oppose Putin because he thinks Putin's way is the way to conduct domestic and foreign relations.

    https://www.vox.com/2018/7/16/17576716/trump-puti…

  3. Let A.E. Housman sum up the situation:

    The grizzly bear is huge and wild;
    He has devoured the infant child.
    The infant child is not aware
    It has been eaten by a bear.

  4. Another accurate term for Trump is the Elizabethan whoremonger. We wouldn't use it today only because it is unfairly pejorative of sex workers, not their customers.

    Mark has tweeted that traitor may be technically accurate, on the argument that the GRU agents indicted by Mueller are members of a disciplined military force that has attacked the United States, making Russia an enemy in the sense of the US Constitution. However, there is a missing link in the absence of proof of Trump's knowledge, a smoking dick. So we should keep this one in the fridge for now.

    Allowing hyperbole is more fun. Scottish protestors greeted Trump with splendidly creative insults, including "Ya radge orange barmpot!" and "wankmaggot".

    PS: Radge and barmpot overlap. Radge (from rage) is crazy-violent. Barmpot is crazy-stupid. Barmpot is the more interesting. Barm is the froth on fermenting beer. British beer drinkers despise a head on beer as a publican's ripoff. Barmy is standard BrE for crazy-stupid. Barmpot is regional, Northern England more than Scotland. A barmpot is a mug full of useless froth. It's a good metaphor for Trump's brain.

  5. It sometimes seems that Trump is amoral and cynical, as when he said, in response to the idea that Russia tried to kill the former Russian spy in England, that "we do (or did) those kind of things too". He's also a florid narcissist. ……….

    In the case of the press conference yesterday it may be Trump does believe Putin, or at least, doesn't believe his own intelligence services, in which case we can say he's gullible—or a lackey.

    But maybe he doesn't CARE whether Putin tried to interfere in our elections-either because he wants to get down to business, or because he conflates any indignation about that with acceptance of the idea that he colluded with the Russians. Then we should either say he's amoral or cynical, or he's a narcissist who can't distinguish his self-interest from the country's.

  6. Remember Obama's "Russian reset"? It worked right up to the point where we decided to expand NATO eastward to the suburbs of Moscow and to meddle in Ukraine. Maybe Trump can do a reset that respects Russia's legitimate interests - if the war party and intelligence community will let him.

    1. What are the "legitimate" interests of a murderous, lawless kleptocracy headed by a completely amoral thug, aajax? Are the interests of that ruling gang the same as the interests of "Russia", which I take to comprise all Russians?

      2. Now now, Unka Aajax is as anti-Trump as anyone out there. We mustn't be belligerent to Unka Aajax; his fee-fees might get hurt.

    2. Consult a map. NATO's eastern border is 1056 km from Moscow at Brest on the Poland-Belarus border. St. Petersburg is closer, 158 km to Narva on the Estonian border. Hardly suburbs of either, unless you count Philadelphia as a suburb of New York.

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