What Do We Even Call Our Current Trump Catastrophe? [View all]

Talk to a psychiatrist about our leader—and we should all be talking to a psychiatrist in this moment—and the term they use is almost certainly going to be batsh-t.

There is a lively debate about how many words for snow or different types of frozen water exist among the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. The numbers cited range between 30 and 300.

Regardless of the particular linguistic theory to which you subscribe, the point is clear. If you live in a world in which snow is everywhere, you’re going to find many ways to describe it.

For the same reason, those of us living in Trump’s America today would imagine our vocabularies would be as swollen as an engorged intestine with different words for sh-t. In a sh-tstorm, after all, it matters just what type of manure is being hurled your way at any given moment— its origins, its composition, its consistency, its odor and just how long it is going to take to make yourself or your community or our country clean again once we eighty-six the flow at its source.

Consider the all the sh-tty words now are regularly used to refer to our leaders, their actions, their supporters, their policies—and thus have gained new meanings. You know what I mean. If someone said to you, ‘I just heard something from “old sh-t for brains,”’ you’d instantly know who they were talking about. If someone said they couldn’t stand the torrent of “verbal diarrhea” they’re now exposed to daily, you would know the source. Or if someone warned you of another “sh-t sandwich” served up in D.C., you’d expect it was a new executive order or piece of MAGA legislation.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-do-we-even-call-our-current-trump-catastrophe/