This is a screenshot of the Charles Blow OpEd.
I like my title better (illustration) but then I have a fondness for powerful descriptive alterations. You can call it skillful or amateurish wordsmithing or disparaging an author by trying to drive readers to your article using clickbait.
The definition of a vicar isn’t applicable to Trump because in various churches a vicar is not the head honcho. Still, Blow used the word probably because it sounded good and most people wouldn’t take it literally.
(in the Roman Catholic Church) a representative or deputy of a bishop. • (in the Episcopal Church) a member of the clergy in charge of a chapel. • (in the Church of England) an incumbent of a parish where tithes formerly passed to a chapter or religious house or layman. • (in other Anglican Churches) a member of the clergy deputizing for another. • a cleric or choir member appointed to sing certain parts of a cathedral service.
There’s no question that the definition of my term, fomenter, fits what Trump is doing. In fact my computer dictionary even uses a political example.
(a fomenter is someone who) instigates or stirs up (an undesirable or violent sentiment or course of action): they accused him of fomenting political unrest.
The New York Times anti-Trump conservative columnist Charles Blow, who has the lead OpEd in this mornings paper, describes the history of how using fear as a political tool in the United States goes back to the American Revolution.
He begins as follows:
The use of white fear and white victimhood as potent political weapons is as old as the country itself. Donald Trump is just the latest practitioner of this trade.
As Robert G. Parkinson wrote in “The Common Cause,” his book about patriot leaders during the American Revolution, politicians used fears of insurrectionist enslaved people, Indian “massacres” and foreign mercenaries to unite the disparate colonies in a common fight.
Does this sound similar to Trump’s rhetoric on Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants, Black Lives Matter and supposed anarchists?
Even the founding fathers used white fear of the “other” for political benefit. And when they didn’t have the facts, they were not above fabrication.
After his history lesson he concludes ominously:
And now Trump has brought it raging back. He knows, as politicians have known before him, how white fear of violence can be exploited and used as a political tool. He has done it before, and he will do it again.
White people still, for now, are the majority of the population in this country and hold the lion’s share of the country’s power. Trump knows that if he can convince enough of them that they are under threat — that their personal safety, their way of life, their heritage, and their hold on power are in danger — they will act to protect what they have.
Trump believes what his departing counsel Kellyanne Conway told “Fox and Friends” last week: that “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”
But Trump isn’t the originator of law and order demagogy, he’s just its latest vicar.
Trump may be the latest leader to foster fear and stoke the flames of violence but he is not an underling. He is a vicar to nobody. He is the president with a hardcore 35% following of zealous supporters represented by people he calls patriots. They gathered in my town of Portland in a vehicle parade said to number in the hundreds and drove from a suburban shopping center into downtown where the murder occurred.
These people have appropriated the American flag as their symbol as if this somehow proves they are more American than anyone who doesn’t pledge fealty to Donald Trump. Fealty of course is another old word which means a feudal tenant's or vassal's sworn loyalty to a lord.
In The Use of Law, published posthumously in 1629, Francis Bacon wrote, "Fealty is to take an oath upon a book, that he will be a faithful Tenant to the King." That's a pretty accurate summary of the early meaning of fealty. Early forms of the term were used in Middle English around 1300, when they specifically designated the loyalty of a vassal to a lord. Eventually, the meaning of the word broadened. Fealty can be paid to a country, a principle, or a leader of any kind—though the synonyms fidelity and loyalty are more commonly used. Fealty comes from the Anglo-French word feelté, or fealté, which comes from the Latin fidelitas, meaning "fidelity." These words are ultimately derived from fides, the Latin word for "faith. (Merriam Websters)
Here’s one final aliteration:
Trump’s patriots have pledged fealty to a fearmonger.
