George Washington: First in war, first in peace, and in boarding group # 1

George Washington secured the airports.

Trump misspoke. What does it reveal about him?

His teleprompter screen was wet and hard to see, and he was ad libbing for a moment. Trump said the Continental Army of 1775 was named after George Washington, and then manned some ramparts and "took over the airports, it did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under 'the rockets' red glare,' it had nothing but victory."

Rain on the parade

No speechwriter wrote that. 

Trump was winging it, perhaps trying to find his place on the scrolling teleprompter script, keeping up the patter.

Democrats are joyfully doing what Republicans and Fox News did constantly--and now again--to Obama, showing Obama accidentally saying he campaigned in 57 states. See what Obama said! Obama is either stupid, or badly educated or dishonest, and actually trying to con us into thinking he visited 57 states! 

Obama just misspoke, and Republicans jumped on it. Trump just misspoke, and Democrats are doing the same, joking and teasing. One way to look at this is that it is meaningless partisan teasing and we shouldn't overthink this.

Or maybe we should. Cracks are how the light gets in.

History professor John Leung, now emeritus from Northern Arizona University, argues there is insight to be gained by looking at the mistake of this national leader. Mistakes are windows into in the shell of curated presentation, and slips of the tongue reveal the thoughts and presumptions actively rumbling around top of mind, but silenced and hidden under the facade of respectable presentation. Citizens need to know what thoughts are rumbling below the surface of their national leaders.

John Leung was born in Macau, was educated at Northwestern and Brown, and had a long career as a scholar of American and East Asian history. Leung brings an interesting lens to the task of considering the thoughts and aspirations of America's own charismatic leader. Leung's scholarship and teaching gave particular attention to the words, behaviors, and intentions, some revealed and some hidden, of China's Mao Zedong.

Trump watchers advise us not to take Trump's patter and tweets literally, but take them seriously. Leung does that.

John Leung, in Hong Kong

Guest Post by John Leung

Mental Mistakes and Linguistic Lapses--a far darker aspect.

     "Trump’s utterly ahistorical “gaffe” in his “Salute to America” speech yesterday about the army taking over the airports during the time of the American War of Independence has rightly been taken to task in the press today for how much it reveals of Trump’s general ignorance and lack of simple, common sense about our nation’s history. 

     Nonetheless, we must also not fail to notice that, aside from and in addition to being a tragi-comedic bit of anachronism, which has become almost banal in its common-ness within Trump-speak (now easily rivaling if not surpassing the language-errors committed by G.W. Bush,) there is a far darker aspect to this particular mistake on Trump’s part. I believe that, far from being a slip of the tongue or a lapse of awareness of history, what could very well lurk behind this statement in Trump’s subconscious mind (and possibly, in his case, only very shallowly beneath his conscious will,) is an actual imagination of the US Army, under his own presidential command, taking over our nation’s civilian airports. 

     This would be a mistake of historical recall if, at some point in our nation’s history, the US military had in fact “taken over the airports,” and Trump had merely misplaced the time and occasion. But that, in reality, has never happened; not even during 911. And the only way in which something like that could happen, one could surmise, would be if Martial Law was declared and imposed on our country, as it has been done in other countries. Let us put this Trump statement in the context of several imminent things: Trump has openly articulated his fascination with the display of military prowess in other countries as an expression of the total control of might and power that those countries’ head of state wields. He has already arbitrarily militarized the nation’s southern border. He expressed a fervent desire, at any cost, to have a similar “show of force” in the nation’s capital on this Independence Day. And he has cast this “Salute to America” overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, in terms of the aggrandizement of the role that use of military force could play in the conducting of the nation’s affairs. 

     Is it too much, then, to think that in this president’s mind, a scenario of the US Army taking over the airports of this nation, predicated by a declaration of martial law following a Trumped-up national emergency, may be considered a possibility if not a historical reality? It does not take a lot for this president to confuse the two!

     We cannot afford to gloss over the President’s mental mistakes and linguistic lapses; they could well be imbedded much more deeply in his psyche, and have much more serious consequences than we initially think."