Trump and the Infant Cry

So I did give in and watch the clip of Mr. Trump throwing the baby out of his rally. Tried really hard not to but it’s kind of a slow news day and it was either give in and watch it, or give in and get out of bed. I think the choice was clear.

Disappointed that I couldn’t actually hear the baby on the clip. All I could hear was Mr. Trump talking about Chiinnaah devaluing her currency when it’s not a good time for us, when we have “big stuff going on” like the Iraq war and Obama’s presidency. In the beginning of the clip he loves babies even if they’re crying, and by the end he can’t imagine anyone would have believed that he really loves crying babies.

I mean, I don’t want to be a jerk, but it is hard to listen to a crying baby. If you’re trying to say something and a baby starts crying, it’s terribly difficult to keep focused on where your words are going. The piercing voice of the baby drags your mind away from the subject at hand until you are forced to acknowledge the one crying. That’s why babies cry. They need you to stop and listen to them. They have to interrupt and insert their voices into the cacophony of sound waves or they will never be paid attention to or get what they need.

It’s why, just to be completely crass, it’s better to kill off a baby before its born and you have to hear it’s cry. In the realm of baby killing, adults chattering away about the goodness or badness of abortion, unbroken by any infant cry, is kind of heartbreaking. The cry is all the baby has got in the world of adult noise.

On the whole, I’m of the mind that it’s the child’s job essentially to grow up and moderate the voice so as to be able to enter the adult realm of ideas and language. The piercing voice of a child–because even when they learn to talk, there’s usually a penetrating quality to the voice that compels attention–has to be moderated. So much of my life involves admonishing children to lower their voices and talk reasonably, talk more quietly, ask more calmly, not interrupt, lower the shriek, put away the whine. If I don’t do this, I have always thought, my children won’t be able to engage in the world as adults, won’t be able to make their way with the use of language, which is so foundational to the human experience.

But then I look at Trump on the stage, or listen to Hillary for a few minutes, and I think, well, maybe I’m wasting my time. Maybe the children should keep the piercing note of every ask. Maybe they shouldn’t bother to move past just shouting. It’s great that Trump, whose words are all produced at an unrelenting volume, would be unhappy about a baby wailing away.

Anyway, the main thing to remember is that words don’t matter anymore, whether spoken or cried. The substance of our political discourse is what we see and feel, not what people actually say. And so as usual I will retreat into a baffled silence.