It’s actually a lot more sinister than “the exact opposite.”
Victor Klemperer, a literary scholar of Jewish origin, turned his philological training against Nazi propaganda. He noticed how Hitler’s language rejected legitimate opposition: The people always meant some people and not others ([Trump] uses the word in this way), encounters were always struggles … and any attempt by free people to understand the world in a different way was defamation of the leader (or, as the president puts it, libel).
-Tim Snyder, On Tyranny, Chapter 9 (“Be Kind to our Language”)
Once you adopt the correct definitions, it suddenly makes perfect sense again. Women, unless they’re personally affiliated with the right type of powerful people, aren’t “citizens.” “The government” doesn’t include Trump or anyone acting on his orders. So there’s no contradiction.
He took rights away from citizens and gave them to the government… Isn’t that the exact opposite of what conservatives pretend to stand for?
It’s actually a lot more sinister than “the exact opposite.”
-Tim Snyder, On Tyranny, Chapter 9 (“Be Kind to our Language”)
Once you adopt the correct definitions, it suddenly makes perfect sense again. Women, unless they’re personally affiliated with the right type of powerful people, aren’t “citizens.” “The government” doesn’t include Trump or anyone acting on his orders. So there’s no contradiction.