Recently while teaching an online writing class for sixth graders in Taiwan, we were editing one girl’s story about her family’s recent visit to Singapore. “The rollercoaster was very fast,” went one sentence. When asked for ways to improve the wording, one classmate suggested, “The rollercoaster was like lightening.” I told her she did a great job replacing a dull phrase with a simile, and she also realized she had used another figurative device called hyperbole.
I complimented her on her understanding of FIGURATIVE versus LITERAL language, explaining it’s a key tool for effective communicators. That’s why the difference between FIGURATIVE and LITERAL language is taught in elementary school. I taught that to my third grade Language Arts students when I was in Taiwan.
Examples of figurative language include: it weighs a ton; it’s raining cats and dogs; talk till you’re blue in the face. We read, hear and say it daily.
***
Last night after church dinner, a man in the chow line observed the nearly-empty bowl of chocolate pudding and remarked to me, “That was a big hit!”
Recently a Roanoke Star.com reader emailed us with a hunch, admitting he was making “a stab in the dark.”
Should I have called 911 to report both for “incitement to violence” due to their references to “hitting” and “stabbing”?
Of course not! Not only would that have been ridiculous on my part, it would show I lacked a third grade education.
That brings us to the “Bloodbath Hoax.”
Former Pres. Donald Trump was speaking at a campaign event on March 16 in Ohio, stumping for his endorsed candidate in the GOP Senate primary (who won on March 19). For context, Ohio will be a key state in this fall’s presidential election; the winner of its Senate seat may help determine which party controls that chamber; and Ohio has many autoworkers and other blue collar folks who used to be the backbone of the Democrat Party but in recent years have increasingly been flipping Republican.
Cheap foreign imports that the Bush/Clinton administrations opened the floodgates to have been killing (figurative language!) American industry and their blue collar employees. Against that backdrop, Trump warned that China is building huge car plants in Mexico with the aims of flooding the US market, destroying the US auto industry and its workers, and avoiding the “Made in China” label by manufacturing in Mexico.
As explained here, “the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) trade pact” lets cars made in Mexico be sold in the US with no tariff!
Trump’s point, paraphrased: If elected, I’ll slap 100% tariffs on on those Chinese-made cars and protect American industry and jobs. But if not elected, it’ll be a bloodbath for the auto industry, and the whole American economy will suffer greatly.
But don’t take my word for it: watch the clip on the right, drawn your own conclusions, then note the media “narrative” on the left.
We are witnessing the invention of the “bloodbath” hoax in real-time
Unfortunately for them, we have 𝕏
Media narrative: Full context: pic.twitter.com/jaYDvtGomn
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 17, 2024
(Notably, when Trump said “bloodbath,” he was using the same language the CEO of a Chinese EV manufacturer had used in February 2024!)
Despicably, the Biden/Harris group grabbed a nine-second clip MINUS context to make it look like “If Trump doesn’t win, the streets of America will run red with blood!” Watch:
Trump: If I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. It’s gonna be a bloodbath for the country pic.twitter.com/BWpWORo9Hs
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 16, 2024
In case anyone needed to know that “bloodbath” has a FIGURATIVE definition, the outstanding Kerry Dougherty shared this nugget:
Bloodbath: pic.twitter.com/oAeOJBBe7L
— kerry dougherty (@kerrydougherty) March 18, 2024
Yet here, in a real-life example of Newspeak that 1984 warned us about, notice what definition Google serves up now, bottom right:
Looking up “bloodbath definition” on 2 top search engines (Google vs DuckDuckGo).
Spot the difference: pic.twitter.com/eaGVKHrmmB
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 21, 2024
Since Biden/Harris are running for re-election and polls show their cause is failing, it’s understandable they would be desperate and play dirty. But even more execrable, as if on cue, most of the establishment media ignored the context and ran with the outrageous Biden accusation. The media’s job is supposed to report news and include crucial context for their audience. Here, we clearly see they are not actual journalists but Democrat mouthpieces masquerading as reporters.
Legacy Media Lies pic.twitter.com/z58fcxWnGw
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) March 17, 2024
So, the media and Democrats are claiming the bloodbath threat was LITERAL, and sadly it includes Michael Beschloss, who touts himself as a presidential historian but is revealing himself as a partisan hack. And to show how common the word “Bloodbath” is, here’s a compilation of the media referring to it many times before Trump’s March 16 speech. (Click the video with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.)
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 https://t.co/Olc3GAj20w
— Politicized Agendas (@Gandersonstake) March 18, 2024
The brilliant satire site Babylon Bee added these gems to the debate.
Unhinged Trump Threatens More Violence By Promising To Trigger A ‘Landslide’ On Election Day https://t.co/wumgO01NKd pic.twitter.com/LceBme4FVv
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) March 18, 2024
Hahaha…. Soon Dems and the media will be stealing their talking points from the Babylon Bee 😂 pic.twitter.com/gZnjgnxaYP
— Sequencer (@RealSeq16) March 18, 2024
The Babylon Bee — a genius of satire:
Democrats Clarify They’re OK With A Bloodbath If It’s Just From Killing The Unborn pic.twitter.com/AMRPdTGq4i
— Տᗩᑎᗪᖇᗩ (@TheSandraHQ) March 19, 2024
In closing, MUCH figurative language we use daily has a violent or gun-related theme: they threw me under the bus; my back is killing me; pain in the neck; he cut me off at the knees; back-stabber; she blew up my phone; he blew up at me; a kick in the head; no silver bullet; straight-shooter; he cut me off; it’s like shooting fish in a barrel; take a stab at it; give them both barrels; give it your best shot…. It’s much of what gives the English language its richness and impact.
In sum, the people who claim Trump made a LITERAL THREAT either lack the language skills of an eight-year-old, or are bald-faced liars. And since the talking heads have high-profile jobs in the media and government, we can believe it’s not the first. They’re not stupid. They’re just deliberately lying to us. Isn’t that “election interference”? Isn’t that an “attack on our Democracy”?
Plus, if “Orange Man Bad” is as bad as they say he is, why can’t they just tell the truth about him, instead of making up lies out of whole cloth?
If enough of us tune out the corporate media and vote right this fall, maybe the resulting economic and political bloodbath (FIGURATIVE) will protect our country before the Left is able to destroy our nation like that rogue container ship destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
Remember in November
Go Deeper:
Trump brushes off concerns about Chinese retaliation to tariffs with his trademark bluntness: “You screw us and we’ll screw you,” he said. “It’s very simple, very fair.”
–Scott Dreyer