“We live in a show business society and we must take it as a revelation or scientific truth – each one will decide according to the way one is in this world. All is show business, from the religious acting to the political one, from the images of a train wreck to those of a concert.” Pilar del Río wrote in an issue of Blimunda, a magazine published by José Saramago’s Foundation.
Donald Trump seems to adhere to that view and is now the Republican front-runner for the next American presidential elections. And he has some credentials for this: he is a businessman and an expert in shows, having graduated in that area of human knowledge the old way, that is, after a few seasons as an apprentice.
Most recently, Mr Trump played out an old card from the political deck: he claims that as some opponents don’t have experience of running a company as he does then they are less prepared than he is to be president of the most powerful economy in the world. (Trump also says that he wants to make America great again, but when did it stop being so?)
It sounds like he has a point, at a first glance. But is a government really like a company? Do companies run specifically to try and better the lives of their employees? Do employees pay their companies a sum of money so that the interests and needs of all of them are taken care of? Or, in a reverse glance, is making a profit a government’s goal? Sure, there are similarities in both enterprises. However “government is like business” is a textbook example of a false analogy.
In an analogy, two objects (or events), A and B are shown to be similar. Then it is argued that since A has property P, so also B must have property P. An analogy fails when the two objects, A and B, are different in a way which affects whether they both have property P.
Examples:
1.Employees are like nails. Just as nails must be hit in the head in order to make them work, so must employees.
2. Government is like business, so just as business must be sensitive primarily to the bottom line, so also must government. (But the objectives of government and business are completely different, so probably they will have to meet different criteria.)
Sorry to have to hit this nail in the head and into your brain, Mr Trump. You didn’t invent the use of false analogies in political discourse, nor outing you on this use will end such practice. After all, even without you, “the show must go on.” And on, and on, and on. Over and out.
As Jon Stewart showed a few times during his last appearances on The Daily Show, there’s no candidate as entertaining as Donald Trump. He’s a guilty pleasure of ours, hopefully only for a summer’s worth of entertainment: the silly season run by the truly silly. The way he trashes out his opponents reveals not Trump's brilliance but rather how poor his opposition really is.
Yet, using a bit of our imagination, we can see Mr Trump being elected. Bush II was elected, for two terms, so why wouldn’t Trump have a chance? The former managed to start two wars which ultimately offered ISIS to the world and the largest number of refugees since World War II. Mr Trump is a businessman, and he’ll deliver at least the double: “A bargain, I say! Four wars for the duration of one presidency! Gather around, folks! What a show I have for you! You’ll never be bored to death again!”
Let’s brace then for some futuristic wars,
The US-Mexican Walled War I. President Trump built a wall in between the two countries and made Mexico pay for it, which they gladly did to prevent the surge of Americans who were trying to escape their own business, sorry, government.
The Vag Wars saw all women hunted down and incarcerated in Kitchen-Prisons for decades with the sole purpose of catering food to the troops, and where solitary confinement was replaced by coupleteries in which the inmates were forced to satisfy sexually Free Men for free.
Canada was annexed after its soldiers were taken by surprise while laughing about what was going on with their neighbours’ government: The Yes We Canuck War.
And, finally, the fierce Hairy Civil War (Fighting at Home is Cheaper!). All males were forced to shave their heads in order to make the president have the best (the only) hairdo in the land. Heavy Metal fans went underground where they let their hair grow the longest possible to defy the authority. They all grew deaf also because their favourite music is more damaging when reverberated off cave walls. Authorities developed listening devices to catch the Metal Moles.
The US-Mexican Walled War I. President Trump built a wall in between the two countries and made Mexico pay for it, which they gladly did to prevent the surge of Americans who were trying to escape their own business, sorry, government.
The Vag Wars saw all women hunted down and incarcerated in Kitchen-Prisons for decades with the sole purpose of catering food to the troops, and where solitary confinement was replaced by coupleteries in which the inmates were forced to satisfy sexually Free Men for free.
Canada was annexed after its soldiers were taken by surprise while laughing about what was going on with their neighbours’ government: The Yes We Canuck War.
And, finally, the fierce Hairy Civil War (Fighting at Home is Cheaper!). All males were forced to shave their heads in order to make the president have the best (the only) hairdo in the land. Heavy Metal fans went underground where they let their hair grow the longest possible to defy the authority. They all grew deaf also because their favourite music is more damaging when reverberated off cave walls. Authorities developed listening devices to catch the Metal Moles.
The future will be a true Hell of a show!
