Inaugural Address--Post #3 (academic): Let the Word Go Forth--And the Word Is "Carnage."

In our third of four part look at the inaugural address of Trump, we see probably the most (in)famous part of the speech, one in which Trump conjures an image of desolation with a host of negative images.

However, this is anticipated by a brief bucolic summary of what Americans want and deserve:

Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

 This continues from the previous section, in which Trump says that the purpose of a nation is to serve its citizens (drawing a distinction between the collective idea of nationhood and the sum of atomostic "citizens" who make "demands."  Although the word "demands" suggests harshness, this is tempered with the adjectives "just and reasonable" followed by the description of the public itself as "righteous" (with its connotations of religious rectitude).

Then, Trump contrasts this with a pseudo-apocalyptic vision.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

Not only do we get the word that has most often been quoted in the days since the speech, "carnage", but we get a host of similarly dark words (in a speech notable for its overall darkness: trapped, poverty, rusted-out, tombstones, deprived, crime, gangs, drugs, stolen, robbed, unrealized.

Indeed, a number of these words are being used for the first time in any presidential inaugural, making these two sentences the most idiosyncratically Trumpian of the speech.  And of these words, all but one is negative.

In their review of the speech, the Washington Post noted the words that appeared in this speech for the first time in the history of inaugural addresses.  Below is their list, with the words appearing in this section highlighted.  (It is worth noting, by-the-by, the degree to which the rest of this Trumpian vocabulary is made up of words with negative connotations.)

sprawl, ignored, windswept, overseas, tombstones, rusted-out, trapped, neighborhoods, landscape, flush, carnage, unrealized, robbed, stolen, likes, listening, hardships, transferring, politicians, reaped, stops, subsidized, disagreements, bedrock, Islamic, reinforce, solidarity, unstoppable, brown, mysteries, arrives, politicians, hire, infrastructure, trillions, depletion, allowing, disrepair, redistributed, tunnels, stealing, ravages, issuing, bleed

Trump pivots momentarily, asking the audience to identify with those left behind. This is the one overt move made to suggest consubstantiality among all Americans.

We are one nation -- and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

The phrase "glorious destiny" invokes the 19th century, particularly in the years just prior to the Civil War, when the phrase was a popular one used in both religious and political contexts--in fact, in its political use, it was clearly invoked for its religious overtones.  It is found in the speeches of, among others, Stephen Douglas and Henry Clay.  There is also the faintest echo of the Clinton commonplace: "I feel your pain."

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

For many decades, we've enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military; we've defended other nation's borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

We've made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.

One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.

The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.

The more domestic failures of the previous section are now revisited, but on a larger scale.  Putting aside issues of veracity regarding the claims made, what is notable is the negativity mixed with a shifting sense of agency.

The passage begins with Trump saying that he individually is taking an oath of allegiance to Americans, suggesting his personal agency in bringing about change.  Then, in the litany of ways in which America has put other countries before our own, Trump uses the pronoun "we."  This may be because the first half of this list contrasts neglect with actions that could be seen as positives: subsidizing the defense of other nations, defending their borders, and providing money for development.  The audience is positioned as a collective "we" who have victimized ourselves through our own shortsighted generosity.

However, toward the conclusion, issues of agency become more muddied as the actions become completely negative.  Factories have shuttered and left on their own.  It's unclear who has not even had a thought about American workers or who has ripped their homes from them.  Again, this allows the audience to populate the unnamed agents of these deeds with their own personal bogeymen and to assume that these are exactly those Trump means.

But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future. We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.

From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.

This passage bears a vague resemblance to the beginning of the Kennedy inaugural, with its insistence that are now focusing on the future rather than the past:  "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans."  In addressing its message to a global audience, it also invokes this part of Kennedy's speech: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

However, much as he reversed Kennedy's purpose earlier in the speech, Trump again alludes to Kennedy's words while specifically negating Kennedy's vision.  The 1960 inaugural famously focused on global events, making a case for the role of the U.S. in the world as a defender of freedom, an ally of democracies, and a protector of our hemisphere.  In Trump's vision, America is reneging on Kennedy's promises, with its vision turned decisively inward.