“A speaker at Trump’s MSG rally said Puerto Rico was a floating island of garbage.”
“Sure. But you have to understand the context.”
“I doubt that. But, okay, I’ll bite, what’s the context?”
“Trump has repeatedly cast America as the world’s garbage can. So it was an invitation to Puerto Rico.”
“An invitation to what?”
“To jump in! You know, come in! Join us! The garbage is fine.”
“Notwithstanding that he’s calling all of us garbage, that policy would be the opposite of Trump’s trademark anti-immigration stance.”
[Sighs] “I guess you don’t understand metaphors.”
“What is there to understand?”
“A metaphor is a linguistic tool, a symbolic comparison of two things.”
“Right. Like how literate people are comparing Trump’s MSG rally to the 1939 Nazi rally in that same venue due its content, tenor, and racist messaging.”
“But a metaphor is not real.”
“But he said it.”
“Did he? Or was it really just a metaphor for a political speech?”
“You’re saying it wasn’t a real speech?”
“Like the MSG rally was a metaphor for a political rally.”
“So you are using a simile to explain a metaphor.”
“Now you got it. We live in a world of metaphors, so in the end, what can we say was real or not? Sure, you hear words, but are they real words? Or just metaphors for words?”
“I can’t believe, at this point, there is a 50/50 chance we will be having these same conversations over and over again for at least the next four years.”
“Heck, I voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 – I will ignore, obfuscate, and argue anything to whatever extent necessary to justify my actions.”
