It occurred to me recently that the best way to deal with the prolific lies and attacks on the press by the President of the United States is to refrain from using his name. His supporters, who are convinced that the mainstream media is “the enemy of the people,” will ignore any material that proves his mendacity.
I have a friend who is a member of the president’s cult. He’s also a fanatical follower of the New England Patriots. He watches every game religiously and has spent hundreds of dollars on team jackets, sweatshirts, caps, and other items with team logos. When he talks about them he doesn’t use the pronoun “they.” He uses “we,” as if he’s a part of the organization. He’ll recap a game by saying “We were behind in the first half, but then we recovered a fumble and scored a touchdown, and then we killed them in the fourth quarter.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. “Root, root, root for the home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame…….” Wait, that’s a baseball song, but you get the idea.
The literary device I used with my friend was the metaphor. In a metaphor, one subject is implied to be another so as to draw a comparison between their similarities and shared traits.
I told him a hypothetical story that could possibly happen half-way
through the coming football season.
I said, “The Patriots have a record of eight victories and one loss, and Bill Belichick gives a press conference to a large group of reporters from various news organizations.
‘We have the best mid-season record in the history of the NFL,” Belichick says. ‘No team has ever won games by such a wide margin. Our offense has scored the most points while our defense has limited our opponents to the fewest points since the NFL began keeping statistics. Our special teams have broken all records for the modern era. The crowd at our opening game at Gillette Stadium was the largest to ever watch a football game anywhere in the United States. We win because of our superb coaching. I am the GOAT of football coaches, and the most modest, too. We only lost the Super Bowl last year because the game was rigged in favor of the Philadelphia Eagles. We are making the NFL great again.’
When Belichick stopped talking, sports writers from the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Worcester Telegram, Providence Journal, and other newspapers ran to their computers and accessed Google on their I-phones so they could fact-check his statements. Television and radio commentators did the same.
They found that most of the statements Belichick made were lies, distortions, or exaggerations. They published their findings in their papers and discussed them on sports news programs.”
I let my friend think about this for a minute. The wheels were turning, and there was the beginning of a scowl on his face. He was catching on to the comparison.
“What do you think?” I said to my friend. “Even though nearly every claim Belichick made was easily debunked by checking records available for everyone to see, should he attack these reporters as purveyors of fake news? Should he call them the ‘enemies of the people’ or ‘enemies of the Patriots?’ If it’s true that they hate him and they’re out to get him, does that mean his statements weren’t lies?”
My friend’s response was typical. “It’s not the same thing,” he said. “You’re comparing apples to oranges.”
Whenever anyone tells you it’s not the same thing, you know it’s always exactly the same thing. It’s the lamest of all lame defenses.
What are you gonna do?
by 
You are a race baiting scumbag.