Erosion commenced at exactly 11:57 a.m. on
Jan. 21, 2017.
On his
first official day on the job, Donald Trump simultaneously tweeted his arrival
in The White House and signaled his attack on the English language:
I am
honered to serve you, the great American People, as your 45th
President of the United States!
After 2+ years of being insulted by his fundamental
misspellings, grammatical gaffes and unfathomable voids of common sense, I have
come to this undeniable conclusion:
Donald J. Trump couldn’t pass the SAT.
On the Scholastic Assessment Test there are 96
questions pertaining to writing, language and reading comprehension, punctuated
by a written essay. From what we’ve been subjected to, there is zero evidence
to suggest the President has anything firmer than a 5th-grade grasp
of his country’s prominent communication system.
After being mocked for his salutatory tweet,
he attempted to correct honored … but
instead compounded the problem and exposed his intellectual impotence by editing
into honoured. Since that episode, the
bar has been steadily, sadly lowered toward the movie, Idiocracy. Today, 58 million people rely on Trump’s Twitter feed for
the leader of the free world’s thoughts, feelings and actions.
Frightening because, politics and policies
aside, he is unfit to represent the smartest country on Earth. Left may be
right and right might be wrong, but correct is bipartisan.
Trump is Trumb.
He doesn’t know “there” from “their”, “to”
from “too”, “weather” from “whether” or even how to spell his biggest nemesis: collussion. Call me a Grammar Nazi,
please. It’s a compliment. I’ve always been amused at how being accused of
inflexibility toward proper spelling is intended to come off as genuine
criticism. Do those same folks attempt to camouflage their own inadequacies by
mocking people with perfect credit, unblemished criminal histories and
undefeated records?
We all make mistakes. I’ve had my share.
Usually typos made in haste, rather than blunders fueled by a lack of
intelligence. Sloppy and stupid may be related, but they are not identical twins.
Sloppy: Friend shows up 30 minutes late to
Cowboys game.
Stupid: Friend shows up 30 minutes late to
Cowboys game, wearing a Rangers cap and baseball glove.
I won’t
hire a company that has “Your No. 1 With Us!” painted on its van, or eat at a
restaurant whose menu boasts “locally sorced ingredients”. Likewise, I’ve declined
writing jobs from companies that tried to recruit me in an email that
misspelled my name as “Ritchie.”
If you don’t have enough integrity to get
the small stuff right, how am I to trust you with the big stuff?
Granted, grammar isn’t the top priority for
a President. But in screwing it up, Trumb has diluted and dumbed-down his
message. His reign of error is a reflection of core values. America’s tone
comes from the top. Is it too much to ask that the most powerful man in the
world is at least as smart as I am?
Wrote the influential poet Ralph Waldo
Emerson, “The institution of the office is lengthened by the shadow of one man.”
Yikes.
Trump’s legacy – and America’s persona – is
trending toward a regression to cavemen inarticulately grunting at each other. While
his 35-percent(ish) base of supporters revel in Trump being unbothered by “elitist”
priorities such as spelling, the most listened to man in the world is – via an
unvarnished blend of insanity and stupidity – putting the art of eloquent
communication in a sleeper hold.
Said Trump on the campaign trail, “I love
the poorly educated!”
(Insert light bulb emoji.)
Again, we can excuse infrequent sloppiness.
But we can’t stomach ingrained stupidity, especially when it’s adorned with
arrogance. Our current toxic combo: One of the dumbest people in a position of
power constantly boasts about being one of the smartest people on the planet.
Among Trumb’s not-so-humble brags:
I qualify as not smart, but genius … and a
very stable genius at that!
Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one
of the highest!
I’m
very highly educated. I know words. I know the best words.
We all have friends and/or family like this.
In small doses, their combination of folly, hubris and hyperbole might be
entertaining, even endearing. But you wouldn’t put them in charge of a running
a Lemonade stand, much less America.
Forget obstruction and collusion, the President
is guilty of heinous crimes against grammar, literacy and common sense. Ironically,
today Trumb tweeted at the U.S. intel chiefs that diametrically disagree with
his warped world view:
Perhaps Intelligence should go back to
school!
Gold help us. Because Trump’s “school”
produced this …
*Referring to Robert Mueller’s Special
Counsel as “council”, “councel” and “counsle”.
*Respecting the “Marine Core”.
*Criticizing a foe for being “shadey”.
*In touting his “ability to write”, chastising
the media for liking to “pour over my tweets”.
*Tweeting his visit to “Oxen” Hill. Oxon
Hill is, of course, the home of the National Spelling Bee.
*Promising to “promote the possibility of
lasting peach”.
*Claiming he invented the phrase “prime the
pump”, which has been around since 1933.
*Tweeting that an opponent got off “Scott
Free”.
*Butchering hereby into “hear by”, “herebye”
and “hearby”.
*Claiming a certain decision played no “roll”
in the outcome.
*Tweeting that Barack Obama had the audacity
to “tapp” his phones.
*Confusing “weather” and “whether”.
*Confusing “their” and “there”.
*Same
with “too” and “to”.
*And again with “loose” and “lose”.
*Tweeting that a first-time occurrence was “unpresidented”.
*Claiming
that a wall would solve America’s “Boarder” security.
*Inaccurately calling British Prime Minister
Theresa May “Teresa”, who is actually a porn actress.
*Promising – twice in the same tweet – that
our great nation will “heel”.
*Boasting – twice in the same sentence – that
there is no “smocking” gun.
*Bragging that he fed the Clemson football
team by paying for “1000 hamberders”.
*Stating that a “hurricane is coming … a
big, wet hurricane”.
*Depicting Puerto Rico as “an island, surrounded
by water … big water … ocean water”.
*“covfefe”.
*Claiming “If you buy a box of cereal at the
grocery store, you have a voter ID”.
*Misinterpreting “Climate Change” as today’s
temperature rather than decades of increased averages. Tweeting it as “Global
Waming”.
*Fumbling, before giving up, on how to operate
an umbrella.
*Walking up the steps to Air Force One with toilet
paper stuck to his shoe.
*Signing his name wholly ineligibly, like a Richter
scale having a seizure.
*Looking directly at a solar eclipse.
*Keeping the ends of his abnormally long ties
together with Scotch tape.
*Believing that America’s F-35 “Stealth” fighter
jet is literally invisible, saying “It wins every time because the enemy cannot
see it. Even if it’s right next to it, it can’t see it.”
*Continually referring to an investigation
that has produced the arrests of six close associates as a “Witch Hunt”.
*Claiming he is a devout “Christian” that
has never felt the need to ask God for forgiveness. “I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it
right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”
*Expecting us to believe he is “6-foot-3 and
239 pounds”. Or, exactly the same size as Cowboys’ running back Rod Smith.
*Saying he needs “an anti-Viagra … I’m not
bragging. I’m just lucky.”
*Disliking pets in general, and dogs in
specific.
*Stating that baldness is a weakness,
shaking hands is dangerous, “email is for wimps” and “environmentally friendly light
bulbs cause cancer”.
*Estimating that the cost of health insurance
for a 21-year-old to be “12 dollars a year”.
*Tweeting “wind turbines are killing millions
of birds”.
*Long ago stopping any exercise out of a
belief that the human body is born – like a battery – with a finite amount of
energy.
Presented anonymously, I would judge those
bullet-point traits to belong to a middle-schooler, a pathological liar or a mythical
villain soon to be portrayed in a movie. Someone, for certain, that I wouldn't want to spend any amount of time listening to or hanging around.
But a President? Our current President?! Get outta here!!!
Evidenced by his random capitalization,
idiocy with idioms and irrational, illogical beliefs, Trumb needs help. I am
hereby volunteering to be his editor.
First lesson: No hyphen. One word.
Resign.
