I just read back my comment and the one above that prompted it, and I realized that the reason things seem upside down is that I am still thinking in terms of people wanting to do what is right, as responsible people do. But those who attacked the Capitol on January 6 and their leader, Donald Trump, use conventional language to mean something entirely different. For instance, when I say democracy, I mean government by and for all the people; when Trump and his followers use that term, they mean government by and for select groups of people. I have learned recently that this deliberate misuse of terms is part of the psychological technique called gaslighting, which attempts to cause people to doubt their convictions. This is why I've been leaning on the dictionary and various other references a lot lately, including our Constitution. I feel an almost constant need to refer to standards. And when speaking, it seems terribly important to chose words carefully, to speak (or write) with precision, and to call out imprecision when encountered and make those speaking (or writing) define the terms they use.
Becky - I’ve been experiencing the same thing. I have until recently never enjoyed learning any kind of history. After a friend told me about Letters from an American, I became hooked! I have been devouring books about American history, particularly regarding the Civil War, but also books and articles about caste systems, political figures, behavioral psychology, neuroscience, and other topics, learning all I can to understand how we got here and how peoples’ beliefs came to be. The more I learn, the more I feel I am understanding people with opposing beliefs. Are there extremists? Yes. Are there non-extremists who are simply people who believe that their values and beliefs are being challenged? Yes. Bottom line is we are all people and like it or not we are all in this together. And we need to be able to speak and communicate using a common language. Words matter. How communication is framed matters. Civility matters.
I am reminded of how powerfully words can communicate in an instant (read George Lakoff, now I see examples everywhere!). Passed a billboard yesterday for an attorney. Headline: Injury Justice. With just two words this communication is framed to make you feel that if you were injured, you were wronged. And this lawyer is already on your side and will help you get what you deserve because you were clearly wronged by someone else. Truly powerful. Politicians have been using this kind of framing too. Think about that. Words matter. It is as you say (Becky) “it seems terribly important to chose (sic) words carefully.”
Yes words are powerful— interestingly though one of the first things I noticed about DT was his limited vocabulary. It’s like a backward sixth grader. Coming after Obama’s formidable language skills in terms of speaking and writing, what a thud.
Liz, I used to think Trump spoke in simplistic language to appeal to his base and deliberately avoided sophisticated language that was unfamiliar to them. When we discovered he reads almost nothing that doesn’t contain his own name embedded in it and stumbles over somewhat sophisticated words written for him on the TelePrompTer, his true illiteracy was revealed. “Think before you speak. Read before you think.” -Fran Lebowitz
That shocked me too, and it took me a while to realize that he doesn't give a rat's ass for me or people like me who try hard to paint clear ideas with words. But he does care for the kind of people who resent the kind of people who try hard to paint clear ideas with words, so he does just the opposite.
Yes, and he also has a learning disability so reading must be tough. However, he is a master of projection, word twisting/gaslighting and brainwashing. He follows Hitler's playbook to a T (for trump!). Might be the only book he ever read all the way through, based on his actions.
I often thought Obama was too good. I LOVE him, but if a newspaper should be written at a 5th grade level, then, when speaking to the public, our leaders should - without condescension - also communicate at that level.
I believe it was Kelly who revealed that they had to bring pictures for him to understand anything as he didn’t read. So awful to have somebody like that in power. A disgrace!
I've met a couple of successful business owners (who immigrated to the US and ended up in my adult ESL classes) who were only semi- or pre-literate in not only English, but in their primary languages. These individuals were smart, articulate in two or more languages other than English, and had become relatively wealthy in areas where many business deals are verbal and contracts made with handshakes. However, I would never want any of them to become the leader of a country. Government is not a business and should not be run for profit (no matter how many have used it in that way).
Lena - I too have become fascinated with history thanks to Letters From An American. I also see that we ignore history to our peril. I wish I could agree that we are all in this together. Yes, civility matters, understanding the power of language matters. But it also matters to face the fact, as Richardson writes, that racism is deeply embedded in what may appear to be our most innocent beliefs - as in the white American brand of anti-socialist "liberty". Recent neuroscience research confirms that we all have the same physical brain but we can develop vastly different mind sets. I no longer know how to use language, civility, logic to bridge that gap. It's beyond me. Perhaps this almost coup will begin our long, slow awakening so that we, as a nation, may finally face our dark history.
Becky and Lena - Your comments reveal how important the teacher is in inspiring the student. If the teacher is fascinated by the topic, her students are likely to be also.
Though many of us are older than our professor, HCR, we are definitely her students. These discussions remind me of the better seminars in grad school. I would have stayed at university forever if it had been possible, but this forum keeps my mind from getting dull and fuzzed over with moss.
Yes, excellent advice. Read George Lakoff -- if you don't want to be framed...
If you really get down to the implications of his writing, that could be a liberating experience. Amost alll westerners, especially Americans, are self-incarcerated prisoners locked into their mental habits, concepts, blind beliefs, prejudices. Even the very word Liberty gets hammered into the bars of a mental prison -- for those whose cells still have windows.
"Liberty and justice for all” can be a frame to unite progressives. Our language and writing and speech would augment this frame with specifics, such as economic and racial justice, and justice for the earth, as we speak of universal health care, education and sustainability.
Sounds good. I would address the issues other readers have raised by adding one word: "liberty, equality, and justice for all." (This has been one of the suggested but not adopted edits to the pledge of allegiance,)
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that Bellamy as a good Christian Socialist had one draft of the pledge with "equality" in it. But in his later comments he never mentioned this, so maybe just a wish. Equality was as dangerous a notion to some in 1892 (they wanted to sell flags after all) as it is (to some) today.
Thanks for your response, Lena. I'm with you on Heather's instigation to the study of history. Watching her FB chat on Jan 14, my husband (who takes time from work to watch) and I laughed with delight at her obvious delight at telling us real stories from the past. I've never seen anything like it. Just think if teachers in other disciplines could do the same!
You made me think of advertising and wonder how it fits in. You know, I often think of politics/current events as a huge, colorful graphic with bubbles and arrows, animated to show the bits that grow and shrink in relation to it all and to emphasize that one bit forces another this way or that. Something like Hans Rosling's animated statistics, or a Wait But Why cartoon set in motion. I can SEE that one thing influences another. Yesterday somebody recommended the book, Elmer Gantry, and I started to read it. Immediately there are Trump (Elmer) and Roger Stone (Elmer's pal, Jim).
I do wonder why we like to deceive each other. I don't. So why do some others?
Advertising used to “advertise” features and then later it was figured out that “benefits” are why people choose to purchase. And then psychology came into the advertising arena and ad execs learned that appealing to peoples’ sense of belonging (using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) could change a single purchase into a lifelong relationship which of course guaranteed corporate profits. Today people will intentionally spend more money on an identical product in terms of function and form simply because it has a particular name or logo on it. They want to “belong” to a certain group.
I’ve often recommended Lakoff, not so much because his ideas influence my own as because there's a correspondence. His central thesis about framing and the metaphor is one to which I'd given much thought decades earlier, when I was an eighteen-year old writing a treatise on painting. .
I was thinking at the time about various ways of relating to Nature, how we are in the world, how we see it, our place in it; and comparing painting in the Western tradition since the Renaissance with Chinese painting.
That may sound very esoteric, but it isn't really. Lakoff and many others speak of the influence of the 18th century Enlightenment, but there's much in our world view that goes back to the Renaissance, hundreds of years earlier.
Anyway, for Lakoff, I guess the starting point should be Metaphors We Live By, written with Mark Johnson. Reissued 2008.
Coming to the political implications of framing issues:
Moral Politics, How Liberals and Conservatives Think (3rd edition 2016)
And Don’t Think of an Elephant (revised edition, 2014
Well, I see you've been into these, but here's another useful short cut:
The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. 2009. Lots of neuropsychology, if you enjoy reading about how our brains work.
I found this video of George Lakoff speaking about moral values. He is explaining exactly why conservatives and liberals think differently. I'm getting so much from this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM
Good point Becky. I have frequently felt the effects of being gaslighted in conversation during the last four years. I too have demanded definitions during debate. Unfortunately without agreed upon definitions we aren’t really conversing. It is maddening if one really wants a conversation to end up just circling the point.
Logical argument doesn't work. We have to think of another way. In a past job in customer service, a teacher used the example of a runaway horse and carriage. Said rather than holding up your arm before it and shouting, "Stop!" you need to mount the horse (not sure how this was accomplished) and gradually slow it down. I understood this to mean that if you want to fix a customer's problem, you must listen to their argument carefully enough to understand how to "slow the horse down." You must be genuinely empathetic. This is very hard to do. I think something like this might work with Trump supporters, but it means facing my own biases and resentments, and so far I haven't been able to let them go well enough to get anywhere near that horse.
MaryPat, I had a long discussion with my husband about your reply. It was about if there can be an objective truth and in what circumstances. We didn't reach a conclusion before getting tired of talking.
Wow, I don't know if I should be honored or if I should apologize! I am reminded, though, when I imagine trying to help a trumper "see the light", of the woman who went to a marriage counselor for help. She was advised (if I remember this correctly), "Just because you are right doesn't make it good." In other words, we are right - tRump is a con. But "telling the truth" to a trumper will not solve the problem. I don't have to change my bias, as much as I need to think about what would be helpful for the other person. A stock market that doesn't wobble and plunge, a job that pays a living wage with benefits, a hero who doesn't tweet lies, maybe a prescription that doesn't combine antidepressant with narcotic with alcohol to cause a serotonin storm of anger. I think I am way off the philosophical conundrum now, and describing 4 trumpers I know. Darn, do we have to do this one at a time? Perhaps. What it may all boil down to is one thing my mom used to say, "Be Nice."
It is indeed hard to do. I have friends who are Republicans who are willing to engage in political conversations over lunch (pre-Covid). It is amazing to me that people I have so much in common with could have such opposing political views. But sitting across from them, one on one, allows for discussions that help to understand why this or that policy upsets them. In the end, it always comes back to them advocating for what they believe is best for themselves and their loved ones. Just like me. Perhaps it would be helpful to view others as “us” instead of “others”. Like when as a child in grade school teachers had us write letters to pen pals in foreign countries - in my case countries considered communist - so that we could see the humanity of those who lived there.
Also trying to read articles from sources supporting other views can expand your horizons as well as reading books with opposing viewpoints. For instance, I’m reading Blackout by Candace Owens to get a perspective on why some believe black people should abandon the Democrat Party. I’ll admit it isn’t easy to read because I disagree with her point of view, but I feel it is important to read so that I understand what the issues are - not her solutions. I believe I can think for myself. But I know I don’t know what someone else’s problems are. I’m a big reader, so this method helps me understand.
linguistic detail - it's the "Democratic" party. 'Democrat' is the noun, 'democratic' is the adjective. Mis-using parts of speech in ordinary speaking (poetry not included) is derogatory. My guess is you picked it up by accident from hearing it so often.
I haven’t re-read the Constitution recently, but I’ve sure done a lot of thinking about it. As Fiona Hill says in a January 11 op-ed on Politico (link on Jan. 17 HCR, easy to find), “Yes It Was A Coup,” American democracy has been stress tested. In a big way. I felt confident for four years, but still, who needs this level of anxiety. We are all about to breathe a very big sigh of relief. We passed the test, but boy, I have a lot of weaknesses been exposed.
Hi Roland! Someone made a comment on something I wrote which has taken me all the way back to HCR in January! Many of us have missed you on HCR's forum...hope your book writing is coming along!
Yes. The only thing he is good at is labeling in his upside-down world. Examples: trying to steal the election away from Biden while calling it “stop the steal”... degrading our country while calling it “make America great again”... professing to love the US military while trashing Gold Star families, allowing Russia to put bounties on our troops’ heads, and bending our military for his political optics.
Yes, upside down thinking. Like Trump wanting to be reelected when he has no interest in running the country.
I just read back my comment and the one above that prompted it, and I realized that the reason things seem upside down is that I am still thinking in terms of people wanting to do what is right, as responsible people do. But those who attacked the Capitol on January 6 and their leader, Donald Trump, use conventional language to mean something entirely different. For instance, when I say democracy, I mean government by and for all the people; when Trump and his followers use that term, they mean government by and for select groups of people. I have learned recently that this deliberate misuse of terms is part of the psychological technique called gaslighting, which attempts to cause people to doubt their convictions. This is why I've been leaning on the dictionary and various other references a lot lately, including our Constitution. I feel an almost constant need to refer to standards. And when speaking, it seems terribly important to chose words carefully, to speak (or write) with precision, and to call out imprecision when encountered and make those speaking (or writing) define the terms they use.
Becky - I’ve been experiencing the same thing. I have until recently never enjoyed learning any kind of history. After a friend told me about Letters from an American, I became hooked! I have been devouring books about American history, particularly regarding the Civil War, but also books and articles about caste systems, political figures, behavioral psychology, neuroscience, and other topics, learning all I can to understand how we got here and how peoples’ beliefs came to be. The more I learn, the more I feel I am understanding people with opposing beliefs. Are there extremists? Yes. Are there non-extremists who are simply people who believe that their values and beliefs are being challenged? Yes. Bottom line is we are all people and like it or not we are all in this together. And we need to be able to speak and communicate using a common language. Words matter. How communication is framed matters. Civility matters.
I am reminded of how powerfully words can communicate in an instant (read George Lakoff, now I see examples everywhere!). Passed a billboard yesterday for an attorney. Headline: Injury Justice. With just two words this communication is framed to make you feel that if you were injured, you were wronged. And this lawyer is already on your side and will help you get what you deserve because you were clearly wronged by someone else. Truly powerful. Politicians have been using this kind of framing too. Think about that. Words matter. It is as you say (Becky) “it seems terribly important to chose (sic) words carefully.”
Yes words are powerful— interestingly though one of the first things I noticed about DT was his limited vocabulary. It’s like a backward sixth grader. Coming after Obama’s formidable language skills in terms of speaking and writing, what a thud.
Liz, I used to think Trump spoke in simplistic language to appeal to his base and deliberately avoided sophisticated language that was unfamiliar to them. When we discovered he reads almost nothing that doesn’t contain his own name embedded in it and stumbles over somewhat sophisticated words written for him on the TelePrompTer, his true illiteracy was revealed. “Think before you speak. Read before you think.” -Fran Lebowitz
That shocked me too, and it took me a while to realize that he doesn't give a rat's ass for me or people like me who try hard to paint clear ideas with words. But he does care for the kind of people who resent the kind of people who try hard to paint clear ideas with words, so he does just the opposite.
Yes, and he also has a learning disability so reading must be tough. However, he is a master of projection, word twisting/gaslighting and brainwashing. He follows Hitler's playbook to a T (for trump!). Might be the only book he ever read all the way through, based on his actions.
According to one of his ex-wives, he had a book of Hitler's speeches at his bedside, and studied it.
Yes, I heard that, too. I think it might be the only book that ever interested his power and supremacy issues.
I often thought Obama was too good. I LOVE him, but if a newspaper should be written at a 5th grade level, then, when speaking to the public, our leaders should - without condescension - also communicate at that level.
I believe it was Kelly who revealed that they had to bring pictures for him to understand anything as he didn’t read. So awful to have somebody like that in power. A disgrace!
I've met a couple of successful business owners (who immigrated to the US and ended up in my adult ESL classes) who were only semi- or pre-literate in not only English, but in their primary languages. These individuals were smart, articulate in two or more languages other than English, and had become relatively wealthy in areas where many business deals are verbal and contracts made with handshakes. However, I would never want any of them to become the leader of a country. Government is not a business and should not be run for profit (no matter how many have used it in that way).
Lena - I too have become fascinated with history thanks to Letters From An American. I also see that we ignore history to our peril. I wish I could agree that we are all in this together. Yes, civility matters, understanding the power of language matters. But it also matters to face the fact, as Richardson writes, that racism is deeply embedded in what may appear to be our most innocent beliefs - as in the white American brand of anti-socialist "liberty". Recent neuroscience research confirms that we all have the same physical brain but we can develop vastly different mind sets. I no longer know how to use language, civility, logic to bridge that gap. It's beyond me. Perhaps this almost coup will begin our long, slow awakening so that we, as a nation, may finally face our dark history.
Becky and Lena - Your comments reveal how important the teacher is in inspiring the student. If the teacher is fascinated by the topic, her students are likely to be also.
Though many of us are older than our professor, HCR, we are definitely her students. These discussions remind me of the better seminars in grad school. I would have stayed at university forever if it had been possible, but this forum keeps my mind from getting dull and fuzzed over with moss.
Yes, excellent advice. Read George Lakoff -- if you don't want to be framed...
If you really get down to the implications of his writing, that could be a liberating experience. Amost alll westerners, especially Americans, are self-incarcerated prisoners locked into their mental habits, concepts, blind beliefs, prejudices. Even the very word Liberty gets hammered into the bars of a mental prison -- for those whose cells still have windows.
"Liberty and justice for all” can be a frame to unite progressives. Our language and writing and speech would augment this frame with specifics, such as economic and racial justice, and justice for the earth, as we speak of universal health care, education and sustainability.
Sounds good. I would address the issues other readers have raised by adding one word: "liberty, equality, and justice for all." (This has been one of the suggested but not adopted edits to the pledge of allegiance,)
I could go with that Tom. Of course, the power of "liberty and justice for all” is the fact that its the conclusion of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Perhaps the Sedition Caucus and others have violated their pledge of allegiance to this country?
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that Bellamy as a good Christian Socialist had one draft of the pledge with "equality" in it. But in his later comments he never mentioned this, so maybe just a wish. Equality was as dangerous a notion to some in 1892 (they wanted to sell flags after all) as it is (to some) today.
Thanks for your response, Lena. I'm with you on Heather's instigation to the study of history. Watching her FB chat on Jan 14, my husband (who takes time from work to watch) and I laughed with delight at her obvious delight at telling us real stories from the past. I've never seen anything like it. Just think if teachers in other disciplines could do the same!
You made me think of advertising and wonder how it fits in. You know, I often think of politics/current events as a huge, colorful graphic with bubbles and arrows, animated to show the bits that grow and shrink in relation to it all and to emphasize that one bit forces another this way or that. Something like Hans Rosling's animated statistics, or a Wait But Why cartoon set in motion. I can SEE that one thing influences another. Yesterday somebody recommended the book, Elmer Gantry, and I started to read it. Immediately there are Trump (Elmer) and Roger Stone (Elmer's pal, Jim).
I do wonder why we like to deceive each other. I don't. So why do some others?
Advertising used to “advertise” features and then later it was figured out that “benefits” are why people choose to purchase. And then psychology came into the advertising arena and ad execs learned that appealing to peoples’ sense of belonging (using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) could change a single purchase into a lifelong relationship which of course guaranteed corporate profits. Today people will intentionally spend more money on an identical product in terms of function and form simply because it has a particular name or logo on it. They want to “belong” to a certain group.
I should have studied psychology. Everything seems to end up there.
For the astute, study never ends. If you are reading Lakoff, you're studying psychology now!
Thank you for the George Lakoff reference. I checked him out. Which of his books are you referring to?
Sorry I took so long to respond to you.
I’ve often recommended Lakoff, not so much because his ideas influence my own as because there's a correspondence. His central thesis about framing and the metaphor is one to which I'd given much thought decades earlier, when I was an eighteen-year old writing a treatise on painting. .
I was thinking at the time about various ways of relating to Nature, how we are in the world, how we see it, our place in it; and comparing painting in the Western tradition since the Renaissance with Chinese painting.
That may sound very esoteric, but it isn't really. Lakoff and many others speak of the influence of the 18th century Enlightenment, but there's much in our world view that goes back to the Renaissance, hundreds of years earlier.
Anyway, for Lakoff, I guess the starting point should be Metaphors We Live By, written with Mark Johnson. Reissued 2008.
Coming to the political implications of framing issues:
Moral Politics, How Liberals and Conservatives Think (3rd edition 2016)
And Don’t Think of an Elephant (revised edition, 2014
Well, I see you've been into these, but here's another useful short cut:
Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17524030903529749
The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. 2009. Lots of neuropsychology, if you enjoy reading about how our brains work.
Thank you!
Any time!
I just downloaded a sample of "Don't Think of an Elephant."
Listening to a sample of "Moral Politics." Woah.
Ordered used copy of "Moral Politics."
I found this video of George Lakoff speaking about moral values. He is explaining exactly why conservatives and liberals think differently. I'm getting so much from this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM
moral politics
Good point Becky. I have frequently felt the effects of being gaslighted in conversation during the last four years. I too have demanded definitions during debate. Unfortunately without agreed upon definitions we aren’t really conversing. It is maddening if one really wants a conversation to end up just circling the point.
Logical argument doesn't work. We have to think of another way. In a past job in customer service, a teacher used the example of a runaway horse and carriage. Said rather than holding up your arm before it and shouting, "Stop!" you need to mount the horse (not sure how this was accomplished) and gradually slow it down. I understood this to mean that if you want to fix a customer's problem, you must listen to their argument carefully enough to understand how to "slow the horse down." You must be genuinely empathetic. This is very hard to do. I think something like this might work with Trump supporters, but it means facing my own biases and resentments, and so far I haven't been able to let them go well enough to get anywhere near that horse.
What if your "bias" is truth?
MaryPat, I had a long discussion with my husband about your reply. It was about if there can be an objective truth and in what circumstances. We didn't reach a conclusion before getting tired of talking.
Wow, I don't know if I should be honored or if I should apologize! I am reminded, though, when I imagine trying to help a trumper "see the light", of the woman who went to a marriage counselor for help. She was advised (if I remember this correctly), "Just because you are right doesn't make it good." In other words, we are right - tRump is a con. But "telling the truth" to a trumper will not solve the problem. I don't have to change my bias, as much as I need to think about what would be helpful for the other person. A stock market that doesn't wobble and plunge, a job that pays a living wage with benefits, a hero who doesn't tweet lies, maybe a prescription that doesn't combine antidepressant with narcotic with alcohol to cause a serotonin storm of anger. I think I am way off the philosophical conundrum now, and describing 4 trumpers I know. Darn, do we have to do this one at a time? Perhaps. What it may all boil down to is one thing my mom used to say, "Be Nice."
It is indeed hard to do. I have friends who are Republicans who are willing to engage in political conversations over lunch (pre-Covid). It is amazing to me that people I have so much in common with could have such opposing political views. But sitting across from them, one on one, allows for discussions that help to understand why this or that policy upsets them. In the end, it always comes back to them advocating for what they believe is best for themselves and their loved ones. Just like me. Perhaps it would be helpful to view others as “us” instead of “others”. Like when as a child in grade school teachers had us write letters to pen pals in foreign countries - in my case countries considered communist - so that we could see the humanity of those who lived there.
Also trying to read articles from sources supporting other views can expand your horizons as well as reading books with opposing viewpoints. For instance, I’m reading Blackout by Candace Owens to get a perspective on why some believe black people should abandon the Democrat Party. I’ll admit it isn’t easy to read because I disagree with her point of view, but I feel it is important to read so that I understand what the issues are - not her solutions. I believe I can think for myself. But I know I don’t know what someone else’s problems are. I’m a big reader, so this method helps me understand.
Candace Owens is a disgrace to her race.
linguistic detail - it's the "Democratic" party. 'Democrat' is the noun, 'democratic' is the adjective. Mis-using parts of speech in ordinary speaking (poetry not included) is derogatory. My guess is you picked it up by accident from hearing it so often.
Typo from rewriting of my thoughts on the fly - thanks for catching the error.
It would be interesting to have stats on how many have re-read, or read for the first time, our Constitution since T**** came into office.
I haven’t re-read the Constitution recently, but I’ve sure done a lot of thinking about it. As Fiona Hill says in a January 11 op-ed on Politico (link on Jan. 17 HCR, easy to find), “Yes It Was A Coup,” American democracy has been stress tested. In a big way. I felt confident for four years, but still, who needs this level of anxiety. We are all about to breathe a very big sigh of relief. We passed the test, but boy, I have a lot of weaknesses been exposed.
Hi Roland! Someone made a comment on something I wrote which has taken me all the way back to HCR in January! Many of us have missed you on HCR's forum...hope your book writing is coming along!
warmly,
Penelope
Yes. The only thing he is good at is labeling in his upside-down world. Examples: trying to steal the election away from Biden while calling it “stop the steal”... degrading our country while calling it “make America great again”... professing to love the US military while trashing Gold Star families, allowing Russia to put bounties on our troops’ heads, and bending our military for his political optics.
That’s not true. He and his cohorts are running the country......right into the ground, just to make Biden’s job harder.