HOW DID YOU THINK ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP AND THE MURDERS IN EL PASO?

Since the tragedy in the Walmart Store in El Paso, Texas there has been discussion in the news media about whether President Trump bears any culpability.

Mostly, since there is no obvious connection from President Trump’s speeches to the specific murderer and the particular murders on that day in El Paso, it seems the position taken is that President Trump is ‘innocent’.[i]

Is this your thinking? Did you think?

The Issue of Thinking

Obviously, Donald Trump did not pull the trigger. The actual shooting in which dozens of people were shot dead and wounded was done by one person.

Does that mean President Trump had no part in their murders as well?

Many say NO.

That, however, is too simple and a seriously incomplete way of thinking about the matter.

The answer to the question depends on how we think about the ‘causes’ of events.

There are direct, immediate causes and there are indirect, proximate causes of events.

While not one of the former, could President Trump, nevertheless, be one of the latter?

The position we take depends on how we think. Specifically, it depends on how we think in response to what is said to us by others.

And, above all, it requires that we think.

Our Thinking

This essay is not really about Trump, it’s about ourselves - how we think and whether we think.

The tragedy for many notwithstanding, the matter for those of us not directly affected is to examine how we think about such events and, indeed, whether we think at all. 

This is no small matter because, as Hannah Arendt warned us, only thinking as such can prevent such evil happenings.

And that implicates us all.

It implicates how we think and the kind of person we are.

Let us look at a way of thinking about the question that is not a ‘quick-fix’ and easy to avoid so as to attend to ourselves and increase our self-awareness.

How Could President Trump Be Involved?

President Trump has frequently used the language of ‘infestation’ and ‘invasion’ to refer to a specific people and also refers to them as ‘pouring into our country’.

He even applied this type of language, as another example, to four members of the U.S Congress when he declared that they should go back to “the crime infested places from which they came” (although that would mean for three of them to their homes somewhere in the United States).

These are metaphorical expressions with the purpose of making connections to our feelings – to provoking responses at the visceral level of how we think.

What connections arise from such expressions? Infestation is suggestive of rodents, insects, bugs and of them being unwanted, threatening, dangerous, harmful.

We are generally in the habit of regarding such pests as things to be killed, eliminated and, in the extreme, exterminated. But what Trump is referring to are people.

Therefore, with the sense of ‘the solution’ being ‘extermination’, we come to genocide.

We come to the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis and Tutsis by the Hutu under exhortations by heads of state in the kind of language being used by President Trump.

Can the Words of President Trump Matter That Much?

There are a number of ways of addressing that question.

First, there is the behaviour of President Trump himself – if he did not believe such language had the kind of effects he desires he would hardly waste his thought and effort with it.

Second, President Trump has his rallies and also, as they say, the presidential ‘bully-pulpit’, with its power to broadcast his words widely throughout the United States and, indeed, the world, at his disposal.

Third, one of the effects of Presidential statements, especially when promoted with the resources of the U.S. Presidency, is to normalise some idea and even to ‘license’ people to unlimited believing, thinking and, therefore, acting in certain ways towards others. These can potentially range from simply nasty and adversarial behaviour to much worse, including murder.

Finally, the use of metaphorical expressions brings us to the way in which President Trump can be a cause, albeit indirect and proximate, through his contribution to the climate of opinion in which the murder of people at the El Paso Walmart Store can be contemplated by someone.

Let us take this approach to our thinking.

Metaphorical Expressions Affect How We Think

We think with metaphors. Metaphors are a way of knowing our world.

Thus, the metaphors we choose to use are important as they shape our thinking, relationships to others and the world, and our lives for better or worse.

Therefore, how people conceptualise and think about others is very important for a society.

The effect of metaphors on how we think is demonstrated by a study of metaphors used in public debate about crime and its solution.

Typical, widely-used examples of crime-related metaphors are ‘crime waves’, ‘crime spikes’, and ‘crime spree, crime epidemic’. Many others will be recalled in a few minutes of thinking.

We get metaphors like these from the news media all the time and we tend to let them slip by, unthinkingly, just as the media also use them unthinkingly.

This study, summarised here, sought to determine whether metaphors have real implications for thinking by exploring how metaphors shape people’s understandings and influenced the way people thought.

In brief, this study had two groups of people independently read two different paragraphs about crime. The paragraphs had the exact same wording except for only one word – a metaphor - being different.

In one paragraph crime was framed as a ‘beast’ and in the other paragraph crime was framed as a ‘virus’. These metaphors are like President Trump’s metaphors and the way they work on us is the same.

The study results showed that the solutions participants proposed to crime were aligned with the particular metaphors they were given and that the metaphors also influenced how participants proposed going about gathering further information on the issue.

The researchers state that all their experiments showed that the “power of metaphors is covert” and suggest “unbeknownst to us” that “metaphors powerfully shape how we reason about social issues”.

The study demonstrates that metaphors work on us by changing how we think.

This is how President Trump operates effectively to manipulate how people think.

Do we stop and think for ourselves when people do this to us?

What Do We Now Think about President Trump’s ‘Innocence’?

What now are our thoughts about the metaphorical language used by President Trump?

Can we now exonerate President Trump of all responsibility for the murders of those people at El Paso?

If yes, on what basis?

If no, what does it mean?

Implications for Self

We are drenched and drowning in the metaphorical contradictions in which we operate to such an extent that we leave ourselves open to the kind of thoughtlessness – the inability to see things from the standpoint of others - and, thereby, to making poor judgments and even to what Hannah Arendt memorably characterised as ‘the banality of evil’.

That is, unless we undertake some ‘hygiene work’ to become aware of our daily use of metaphorical reasoning and clear up our thinking. 

An aspect of the ‘hygiene work’ needed to use metaphors effectively requires keeping the literal meaning of the word or phrase distinct from the figurative meaning. The former is descriptive, and the latter is evocative. These should not be confused as our thoughts are then confused.

Questions for Personal Development

What are the implications for ourselves of what we now think about the kind of metaphorical language used by President Trump?

How do I see myself now?

What have I become aware about myself?

What will I do about – on foot of - these observations?

Does my ‘immune system’ protect me from the likes of the ‘Trump virus’?

If not, do I want to do something about it?

If no, why not?

“If your thinking is true then the metaphors by which we think must be good metaphors.”

C.S. Lewis

The Keynes Centre's next round of Reading for Transformation Book Circle begins September 30th. If you found this article interesting and beneficial to you, join this 8 week programme designed to Transform How You Think. Places limited. Contact us at [email protected] or visit our website at https://keynes.ucc.ie/readingforchange/ for more information.

[i] There is the issue of the murders ‘manifesto’ and the claim that much of its language mirrors that of President Trump’s language.