Yes, Monstrous Words Make Monsters

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2018/10/27/yes-monstrous-words-make-monsters/?fbclid=IwAR3MduTxeZdSwbu6nbLxpiQ9aid3FlkVlXzJ2k-svNEBJju-7Vw2ykT24qA

Yes, Monstrous Words Make Monsters
October 27, 2018 / John Pavlovitz


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Cesar Sayoc is the logical manifestation of the language of this President.

He is the sum total of his every reckless insult, irresponsible untruth, and calculated attack; the disfigured Frankensteined monster, made from every factless conspiracy theory and incendiary rally rant, each corrosive verbal attack on people of color and immigrants and women and the media.

Cesar Sayoc is the clear accumulation of a seemingly endless Presidential Twitter feed, filled with nonsensical ramblings, spewed from the head of a man who feels no accountability for the collateral damage of his words—either on those who are his targets—or those weaponized by him against them.

The words of a President weigh more than perhaps anyone else’s. There is a gravity to the voices of our leaders that corporately shape us in ways few things do. They have always determined the trajectory of our nation, carried us through unthinkable tragedy, clarified who we are as a people, driven us to reach for dreams that we believed were beyond us.

The words of a President, when wielded responsibly and with decency, help us to tap into our shared humanity; to remind us of our interdependence, of our commonalities, of the responsibility we have toward one another.

But when tossed around carelessly, the words of a President (like this President), ratify people’s phobias, stoke the fires of their bitterness, sanction the violence they cultivate in their heads, legitimize their irrational bigotry toward their neighbors.

Cesar Sayoc isn’t a surprise.

He may be an terrifyingly extreme extension of this President’s words, but he finds himself on a long and growing continuum of millions of angry, scared, unloved, people who believe the world has wronged them—and now have someone (the most powerful someone), to tell them that they are right.

Whether it’s in racial epithets screamed at strangers in traffic, xenophobic signs posted near voting booths, venomous racists social media diatribes from grandmothers, xenophobic outbursts at holiday meals, or vans plastered with anti-media propaganda—monsters are being made by this President’s words.

Yes, words make things and they kill things.

Cesar Sayoc is the kind of monster this President has helped create in unhinged campaign rants and social media tantrums and “lock her up” chants” and dehumanizing rhetoric—and the worst of it all, is that he seems oblivious to his culpability, defiant in his outrage, and determined to double down, no matter how many people he places in harm’s way.

He refuses to use his words for anything but division and injury and enmity, and so those so desiring war, those seeking consent, those who share his heart—find license to be horrible.

This President is a monster-maker.