Edward Lear: from Book of Nonsense (1850s)

"Fishermen and golfers tend to be the most prodigious liars, masterful Blatherers."

News outlets have finally started publishing ver batum quotes from our incumbent. Before, journalists would attempt to translate whatever he'd attempt to say in what might have been a misguided belief that it was their journalistic responsibility to at least try to translate the essence of what he'd attempted to impart. This tactic failed in two significant ways. First, nobody could ever be confident that they'd adequately parsed a proclamation, so the reportage violated some journalistic first principle separating observation from fiction. The results often better qualified as reassuring fiction. Second, the reader was insulated from the more significant element of the story, that their president exclusively spoke in incoherent utterances instead of straightforward sentences. During the campaign, many complained that he seemed to be losing cognition. They'd assess word variety and see that his vocabulary had shrunk compared to earlier campaigns. Video of his speeches, almost exclusively replayed in small snippets, also demonstrated a definite incoherence. Those who survived one of his ninety-minute barn burners tended to lose cognition themselves from being subjected to his usages for so long.

Now that he's chief executive, he seems to have lost some of his former reticence. He seems to have lost what once kept him from blurting out the more ridiculous and self-revealing passages. Please don't mistake this statement to be suggesting he's slowed down his lying. Much of what escapes his lips clearly qualifies as untruthful. He now more often seems to blurt out stuff without editing or caution, though. His statements often seem more inadvertently self-disclosing. He no longer appears to try hiding what were probably once just poorly hidden agendas. He Blathers on as if unaware that he's disclosing his grand strategy to defeat another imagined enemy, clearly unqualified to hold a top-secret security clearance. Further, he over-relies on a few familiar constructions. His approach to delivering public statements comes across as pompous as if he needs reassurance that he is the biggest dog in the room. His lies arrive wrapped in remarkably similar packages. His speeches, such as they are, violate many of the fundamental tenets of speech-giving, a distinction that I'm confident he revels in acknowledging.

He claims personal credit for anything he characterizes as good but never admits any association with anything wrong or failed. Someone else always commits the bad stuff, often Joe Biden, who, while no longer in office, seems to have continuing influence. The following passage, taken from a recent self-important statement he made concerning the Los Angeles wildfires, can serve as a near-perfect example of his Blather in action. (I've highlighted his comments with quotes and italics and elements that seem part of his typical pattern with bold.)

“I invaded Los Angeles and we opened up the water, and the water is now flowing down." …

He ordered the Corp of Engineers to open flood gates in some disconnected reservoir in winter, which released millions of gallons of water held in reserve for summer agriculture. This water did not flow to Los Angeles but past its intended farmlands, which were then saturated from winter rains, to ineffectually flow out to sea, infuriating the farmers who would depend upon that water during the upcoming growing season. This release was likely illegal and could spark lawsuits for damages by the farmers who had been relying upon that resource to help them survive until harvest. As with many things this president initiates, this one might well result in another lost lawsuit and significant damages.

(Continuing his statement) … "They have so much water they don't know what to do. They were sending it out to the Pacific for environmental reasons. Ok, can you believe it? And in the meantime they lost 25,000 houses. They lost, and nobody’s ever seen anything like it. But, uh, we have the water—uh, love to show you a picture, you’ve seen the picture—the water’s flowing through the half-pipes, you know, we have the big half-pipes that go down. Used to, twenty-five years ago they used to have plenty of water but they turned it off for, again, for environmental reasons. Well, I turned it on for environmental reasons and also fire reasons but, ah, and I’ve been asking them to do that during my first term, I said do it, I didn’t think anything like could happen like this, but they didn’t have enough water. Now the farmers are going to have water for their land and the water’s in there, but I actually had to break in. We broke in to do it because, ah, we had people who were afraid to give water. In particular they were trying to protect a certain little fish. And I said, how do you protect a fish if you don’t have water? They didn’t have any water so they’re protecting a fish. And that didn’t work out too well by the way….”

[Take a deep breath here to recover from that extended quote …]

He declares: "They have so much water they don't know what to do." This is clearly untrue. But how could it be true? How could he know? Oh, he's projecting an all-knowing perspective. This pattern often appears when he's Blathering. He speaks from an impossibly omniscient perspective, as if he stood on high, up and over, glowering down over "his people." He often proclaims that "nobody's ever seen anything like it" or some similar variant. This assertion fixes the moment as one of great significance, almost Old Testament Biblical. He usually provides some phony excuses to use as targets, such as when he asserts that California has turned off its own water for twenty-five years for environmental reasons. This assertion was apparently intended to appear stupid, so our president could seem like a genius in comparison. Who else saw through this folly to find a simple solution? It was a phony folly with nothing resembling a solution, more like a convolution. This combination often appears in this guy's proclamations. Somebody else was behaving stupidly until he, our savior, stepped in to personally resolve the difficulty. Our Hero!

Grievance also often creeps into these speeches. Actions he recommended others take during his first term but were ignored are a familiar pattern. He also frequently claims to have to "break in" to accomplish his salvation since the rules were apparently designed to prevent such positive intervention. This shows him as some sort of action hero, capable of violating rules to accomplish his ends. In this sense, he accurately portrays his actions. Since he started this administration, the resulting lawsuits stand as testament to his continuing lawlessness. His losses when judges scrutinized those actions have largely rendered them less than chivalrous. They've mostly been reversed with prejudice when his Justice Department proved incapable of producing positive evidence to support them in court.

There was no fish. That little fish began appearing in Ronald Reagan's speeches when he was president. It might be that both he and the current incumbent have been the only presidents so far to suffer discernable cognitive impairment while in office. Perhaps that little fish indicates that he's losing his marbles, too. The fish, though, doesn't hold that much significance. It merely represents another lie. Each speech and every proclamation from this guy seems to have been premised upon some lie. These often seem to be teetering atop some urban legend familiar through repetition, evidence that if anyone repeats any assertion enough, it's rendered as useful as truth, perhaps even more so. This president's legitimacy was purchased with such currency, which is clearly counterfeit, but he continues to attempt to pass it. He's at least as slippery as that little fish. He's a largely fictional character with an ever-diminishing physical presence. When he's not Blathering, he's off golfing, where I'm confident he's always lying about something. Fishermen and golfers tend to be the most prodigious liars, masterful Blatherers.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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