Donald Trump and The Rectification of Names ©2025
Is Donald Trump a sage? 必也正名乎! Bì yě zhèngmíng hū
Trump’s Official Photo 2025 by Daniel Torok (Wiki / Public Domain)
This essay is a dramatic departure from my normal scribbling on early modern Japanese history through the Occupation, which focuses on the interaction of martial arts with Japanese society and how a nation could be swept up in the fever of militarism to its near utter self-destruction. In doing so I examined the role of Confucianism in Japanese society and found it to be important, and the thoughts of the men and women I studied more affected by it than I could have imagined.
As a student of Confucianism I find the topic too compelling to ignore, so I spent time to try to make my thoughts and the topic understandable to a range of people. I expect more than a bit of flames because of Trump’s controversial nature, but realized my primary subject was controversial in his day, too, and is thought to be a sage by hundreds of millions today.
So here it is. Is Donald Trump a sage?
Tokyo, February 8, 2025
Donald Trump and The Rectification of Names ©2025
Or, is Donald Trump a sage?
(必也正名乎! Bì yě zhèngmíng hū)
President Donald Trump is making news and history with his rapid succession of executive orders and confirmation of his appointees. One of the most striking aspects of the first days of his second administration is his action to rectify words, to mandate the correct government use of words that have been used to support radical agenda in America.
Trump’s approach is strikingly different from previous Democratic and Republican administrations, who before sought incremental changes, with “progressives” seemingly adding more and more new words and novel nuances to the language of America in support of their progress.
While Trump’s word-changing campaign may seem unique to most, to me it strikingly reminds me of the response of another man asked to head a government many years ago.
That government was of the ancient Chinese state of Wei (衛), the man was the sage Confucius (孔子 CH: Kǒngzi JA: Kōshi), and the time was almost 2500 years ago.
Confucius’ prominent and loyal disciple Tzu-lu (子路 542–480 BCE), also known as Yu or You (由), sought to finalize the discussion for Confucius to head Wei’s government. Yu said the Duke of Wei was ready, and asked what Confucius would do as his very first act.
Confucius famously answered:
必也正名乎! (CH: bì yě zhèngmíng hū)
What is necessary is to rectify names.
…… continue reading at the linked PDF file ……
Donald Trump and The Rectification of Names ©2025
Lance Gatling The Kanō Chronicles
Sincere, useful comments are welcome. No rabid flames, please; after so many years you’re not likely to have a new, entertaining way to slam Mr. Trump, so I’ll just ignore or delete anything over the top.
I will try to answer serious questions but don’t be surprised if I just prescribe long books on Confucianism or ask you how you would otherwise explain the similarity in approaches to governing.
Thank you for reading The Kanō Chronicles©: The Untold History of Japan!
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It is obvious and trivial, that there is a deep relation between language (or "names") and the development of society ("politics"). So there is a link between "correct language" and "truth".
It is a well-known strategy for those, who want fundamental changes in society to start with changing the language, to make unsayable things sayable. I fully agree, that Trump uses this strategy more than any other (leading) politician in democratic countries I know. Usually we find this more in autocratic countries.
The example of gender is very interesting in this matter, because the question is, what defines a gender? Are these biological parameters or is it a matter of psyche - or both? In my case, it is 100% male, but we know of persons, where biology and psyche are not in accordance. So what is the "proper" language, that reflects truth? Nobody can deny, that these people exist and no christian people can deny, that they are also gods creation? So how to deal with these people? Can we say, god made a mistake? And what would follow next? "Correcting" god´s mistake? By what means... ?
I could add many more examples about the relation between controlling a discourse by changing the use of language. Not only in the US and not only by Trump. As said before: this is a well-known strategy everywhere and to recognise these attempts are crucial for a functional democracy as a requirement to make your own qualified opinion.
Very interesting clip and a part of a "documentation". What was posted by these people is only said it was "posting a racist cartoon online". And we do not see any names or functions about the germans, who are talking. Nothing seen here can be checked. Not even the date, when the footage was recorded. And we do not know anything about the posters.
But there are some very interesting details. It is said, that it was a coordinated effort against "hate speech" across Germany. Let us check it. A house search may only take place on the basis of a judicial warrant - in case of coordinated action in every single case. If actions are coordinated by BKA (equivalent to FBI in USA) and not by local authorities, then it is not about "insulting" other persons. it´s then about about calls to kill someone or groups of people - in other words, we are talking terrorism. The clip is very likely about this day:
https://www.bka.de/DE/Presse/Listenseite_Pressemitteilungen/2024/Presse2024/241112_PM_Aktionstag_Hasskriminalit%C3%A4t.html
From time to time we see (too many) terroristic attacks and political motivated crime by different groups (ultra-right, islamistic, mentally ill persons, that do not fit into any scheme). BTW: far more crimes by ultra-rights against migrants ans jewish people, then islamistic terrorism.
Recently we see a rise of a right-wing party (AfD) to about 20% in Germany, that is in parts anti-constitutional. One of their leaders can be called a fascist and he is also sentenced for using nazi-slogans. Even the right-wings of France do not want to cooperate with them, because they are too radical!
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/ausland/eu-parlament-afd-front-national-le-pen-zusammenarbeit-100.html
AfD is traditionally anti-european and also (partly) anti-american, but has many connections to Putin and China. Because of their anti-european agenda, they are supported by those, who wish a weak European Union. We see also a rise of similar partys in other european countries (Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Slowakia, Italy...). In their propaganda, there is a classical Perpetrator-victim reversal. The anti-democrats claim to be victims and of anti-democratic system - and using the freedom, that they only have in a free country for this claim with the objective to change the system....
Their blueprint is.... Trump! Facts are fake and fake are facts? Those criminals of jan 6th were "american patriots"? Next Perpetrator-victim reversal: It was Ukraine´s fault to be attacked by Russia?
Sorry, but USA is at a point where Germany was in 1933. Unsatisfying economic, social problems, external groups are responsible for this (Germany: jewish,. marxists US: migrants, democrats), desire for a "respected country" (MAGA, similar to Germany after WWI), desire for a strong man taking the lead, cutting all illoyal institutions with fireing everybody, who does not follow "the agenda of the president" (in Germany we called this "Gleichschaltung" or "bringing in line", but there is no english aquivalent), controlling the media etc.
Controlling the media does not happen by classical censorship, but by systematicly undermine trust of media, by calling uncomfortable news fake news and witch-haunting and never offer any facts for own claims. But social media spreads all that by using algorithms nobody knows and troll-bots in an industrial way (I am now talking about russian troll factorys.
Now the circle is closed to the clips you posted.
Sorry for the long post.