#also hes j generally responsible for many deaths both directly and indirectly

[wyllzel]

yknow for my first time gifing a movie and trying a dark scene 😭 i will give myself a pat on the back for this one...

[billehrman]

Curb Your Enthusiasm

While we have made tremendous strides fighting the coronavirus, we want to temper some of that enthusiasm as it relates to the markets as we have a long way to go until things are settled. Clearly it is good news that growth in the number of new cases of the coronavirus is cresting which will permit some states and countries to open. We believe that the pace of the recovery will be slow until we have a therapeutic, antivirals, contact tracing, more testing including antibody tests and eventually a vaccine. While we finally can see light at the end of the tunnel, we will not see a semblance of how things were until 2022.

The financial markets are fighting a tug of war between global economic weakness and tremendous liquidity to the tune of over $7 trillion having been created so far by all the monetary authorities and governments around the world. We find it amusing to listen to the pundits who constantly remain one step behind getting bearish as markets decline and bullish when the tape is rising.

We are in a unique economic environment where we see only a handful of fundamental winners over the next few years.  These companies are benefitting directly and indirectly from the new normal where we spend more time in our homes utilizing smart devices to access services heretofore done in person. We would continue to avoid all companies needing government assistant who are in financial trouble due to the drop off in demand as a result of the coronavirus. We do not see demand for most of these companies returning to levels achieved just a few months ago until 2022 therefore profitability and balance sheets will remain challenged and at risk. Many may not even make it. We see the market tiering further over time giving higher than historic valuations to the winners in the new normal while avoiding the losers.

More than ever this is a market of stocks rather than a stock market. Active management is the only way to invest in the new normal as passive money managers will hold many of the losers that need to be avoided at all costs. It will be interesting to hear what Warren Buffett says tomorrow at Berkshire Hathaway’s online Annual Meeting. While he is the ultimate active manager, he has sung the virtues of passive investing for years.

The global number of coronavirus cases as of Friday hit 3.28 million with 234,000 deaths while the number of cases in the U.S now exceeds 1.1 million with over 63,800 deaths.  While the rate of gain has crested, we remain concerned that countries and states are opening too soon as we do not have enough testing nor is there a therapeutic available so we can feel safe. We get how hard it is for politicians to risk of opening too soon. They have to weigh economic, social and emotional impact of not opening vs. the risk of the virus continuing to flourish and possibly resulting in death. Personally, my biggest concern is an acceleration of cases as we open, which, of course, would cause another lockdown. As we open slowly, we need to maintain strict social distancing and making the wearing masks mandatory for several more weeks.

We heard last week that Gilead’s Covid-19 treatment Remdesivir showed encouraging results from a key U.S trial. Patients who received the drug recovered in 11 days, on average, while those taking a placebo took 15 days. Both Drs. Fauci and Hahn, after reviewing the data, said that this could be a game changer and are supporting emergency authorization by the FDA to permit its use. And the FDA did grant permission for emergency usage yesterday.  There was also some positive news on a vaccine from Moderna and Oxford University/Astra Zeneca. Bill Gates, who is investing heavily in this area, went out on a limb predicting a vaccine possibly as soon as in 9 months but certainly within 18 months. There are over 100 drug companies working on therapeutics, testing and vaccines. All good stuff!

It appears that monetary authorities have unlimited capacity to provide liquidity to the financial markets. We heard last week from the Fed, BOJ, Bank of England, and the ECB that each will buy unlimited amounts of bonds in response to the coronavirus. Again, all this liquidity will not create demand which really is the only way out of the global recession/depression. We will need as Fed Chairman Powell and ECB President Lagarde both said major fiscal spending programs to boost demand while also providing money to individuals/companies to make it to the other side. We expect our government to implement Phase 4 and 5 programs as needed to supplement individual incomes and provide money to small/medium size businesses to stay afloat rather than filing bankruptcy.

Bonds spreads continue to narrow which shows that monetary policy has provided enough liquidity to assuage market concerns. The bond market is operating very efficiently permitting companies to raise money up to 100 basis points better than expected. Boeing’s 25 billion offerings were oversubscribed by 3-4 to 1. U.S high-grade bond issuance continues to set new records each week.  All good news!

We focus on long term profitable investing with a 12- to 24-month time frame. The market environment remains favorable as the Fed is providing so much excess liquidity not needed by the real economy such that it is pushing investors further out on the risk curve. We always maintain cash reserves knowing that the market could have a correction at any time providing opportunities to add to our portfolios at lower prices. We believe that the U.S economy will be bottoming out shortly which is good news even though we think the recovery will be an elongated U.

Not all stocks are equal. Corporations have never faced an environment like this so it is important to listen to earnings calls so you can differentiate the winners from the losers. Especially in today’s environment, you need to focus on management, strategies, and financial strength. Avoid at all cost companies with demand and financial problems as it will last well into 2021 at a minimum.

We continue to focus on the winners in the new normal. Our list includes companies whose business models are mostly tied to the web/internet/data centers where usage has gone through the roof. Our positive view on these companies was supported by their first quarter earnings reports and conference calls which demonstrated all their favorable short- and long-term strengths. The best is yet to come for each of them. The Democrats are proposing an $80 billion-dollar bill to promote broadband expansion and buying smart devices for all that cannot afford them. 5 G will play a major role as the next generation for cellular technology. If you can, listen to the Qualcomm conference call. We also added a financial and an industrial. Both are best in class and will gain market share/profitability as we move through the other side.

We do not own bonds, the dollar nor private equity funds.

Finally, we would hope that all countries work together investigating the origin of the coronavirus rather than doing it individually.

Our weekly webinar will be held on Monday May 4th at 8:30 am EST. You can join the webinar by typing https://zoom.us/j/9179217852 into your browser or dialing +14086380968 or +16465588656.

Remember to review all the facts; pause, reflect and consider mindset shifts; turn off your cable news; do independent research listening to the earnings calls and…

Invest Accordingly!

Bill Ehrman

Paix et Prospérité LLC

[xyliane]

I just realized where we are rn in HxH is about Aug 2001. So now I am wondering if Togashi will have a special event corralating to 9/11 and I'm worried.

let me preface this response by saying I’ve been in research paper spiral for the last four months due to my impending advancement in june, and your question provoked a knee-jerk reaction that led to a 4h-long research spiral by someone whose specialty is absolutely not japanese foreign policy and nationalism.

the tl;dr version here, and then the explanation for it under the cut: I don’t think that’s going to happen. for one, they���re currently on a boat headed to Big Murderous Landmass (unless kurapika and co sink the whale). they’re not in yorknew/nyc. also, japan’s perceptions of 9/11 and the media representations of it are not as pervasive as american or even broader western collective trauma. while togashi is unafraid to address contemporary social politics, I don’t think he’s going to correlate a particular event to 9/11. he’s more concerned with the failings and strengths of humanity, as a whole or in parts, and might reference particular events to get across a greater point, not draw direct parallels.

now, a cut, and then several hundred words on 9/11 as a moment of collective trauma, japanese militarism, and media perceptions. it is 4000% nerdier than this ask expected.

I don’t think togashi is going to include a 9/11 parallel in a large part because of how japanese media, and anime in particular, addresses japanese communal trauma, and how togashi uses moments and evocations of these in his stories (at least, yyh, and hxh, although level e has its own quirks). namely that japan really doesn’t deal with 9/11 like americans do–but they absolutely have other traumas that make their way into anime, manga, and other media.

the thing is that, while 9/11 is absolutely a moment of international trauma (I work in india, and people there are highly conscious of it), the moment that hit the US was very different in other parts of the world. I’m old enough to remember the whole “where were you on 9/11,” itself a sort of marker of solidarity and belonging within the trauma that kind of unites people around a time. the plane crashes were broadcast everywhere in the US, and no one didn’t see it. but we got it live, fed right to the tvs in our classrooms at 8am. and america didn’t get attacked by foreigners before, not like this–problems existed “out there,” not in nyc, for however many times it’s been destroyed on film. (we have our own homegrown terrorists, but that’s a whole other can of worms.) and when it did happen, the country as a whole kicked into a jingoist gear on top of the collective trauma of someone murdering a bunch of americans. freedom fries. they were a thing.

it’s probably important to note here that media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. we’re perpetually influenced by things that happen, whether they’re collective and historical memories, personal experience, or social trends. we get our references and jokes from somewhere, and they sink into our brains and affect what we put out into the world. trauma does this more effectively than most things. trauma elicits a search for meaning, whether it’s a question of “why did it happen” or “why did it happen to me/us?” sometimes we find a meaning in the disaster, and sometimes we don’t. but it marks us and connects us (Halbswach 1992, Updegraff et al 2009). and it affects us for a long, long time.

in japan (and again, I’m not an expert on this), 9/11 is a moment of international trauma that marks japan’s re-entering into the international military sphere, but also economic flux. of the approximately 3000 people killed in the twin towers attack, 316 were non-american, including 26 japanese nationals. japan joined the war coalition almost immediately, and spent billions of USD to support the “war on terror,” while also dealing with things like shohei koda’s beheading in 2004 or the kidnapping and release of 5 journalists and anti-war NGO workers the same year, which arrived back in japan only to be ostracized for “causing trouble” for japan, with accusations that they had “got what [they] deserved” (x, x). the effect on the news media in japan was of increasing conspiracy theories and warmongering, while simultaneously wary of tensions with china, north korea, and taiwan. basically, japan politically and militarily had a lot of pots on the fire, and was feeding yen to the american pot real fast. the japanese SDF pulled out of central asia in 2007, and it’s still a divisive subject from the papers I read, but it’s more about the military than 9/11. 9/11 is not, for example, the topic of a j-drama directly or indirectly. shohei imamura’s short film “japan” in the september 11 (2002) anthology is a parable set during world war ii, although he’s much more famous for his palme d’or wins and a film about hiroshima (black rain, 1989). and uh. apparently pokemon black and white has a reference to ground zero in their map of not!nyc?

japanese media’s collective trauma in anime is often the deep personal connection with the atomic bomb, or terror attacks and natural disasters on japanese soil. which makes sense: humans will generally latch onto things that affect us personally, whether it’s a cute puppy video shown to us or an act of terrorism we watch on television. for the US, we were–and still are–being forced to confront our place in the international community (hero, victim, villain, collaborator, all of it–and americans are not very good at shades of gray) through the “war on terror,” and it comes out in everything from comic book movies like bvs directly evoking 9/11 while cavill!supes ruins buildings to kill zod, to the rise of partisan tv news. but we don’t evoke nuclear war or radioactive waste with the same reaction that japan does–there’s a lot of fear of the bomb in the 1950s and 1960s, like with dr. strangelove and them!, but it’s centered less around the impact of the bomb and its literal or metaphorical nuclear fallout, and more on the fear of the other or an outsider destroying good ol’ american culture. or giving us superpowers. (personally, the closest I think american art and literature ever got to japanese sentiments is with a canticle for leibowitz, which focuses on the cyclical nature of human failure and how the past becomes changed through the present.)

(please read a canticle for leibowitz, it changed my life and only grows more potent with age.)

for japan, the dropping of atomic bombs on nagasaki and hiroshima provides a similar and long-lasting moment of national trauma that’s been preserved in public policy and popular culture. and it’s not just grave of the fireflies or barefoot gen, anime that address the bombings through direct reference. the bomb transforms into concerns about nuclear destruction and environmental fallout, with kaiju like godzilla rising from nuclear waste. osamu tezuka’s work like astro boy is in direct response to the abuse and use of technology and hope for humanity’s future, and naussica of the valley of the wind is a fantasy post-nuclear bomb situation blended with hayao miyazaki’s love of humanity and nature (x, x). I think it’s worth noting that both tezuka and miyazaki personally experienced the 1945 bombings. miyazaki was 4, and one of his earliest memories is fleeing utsunomiya’s bombings. tezuka, at 16 and working in arsenal factories during the fire bombing of osaka, later wrote kami no toride (1977) about his personal experience, which served as both autobiography and condemnation of the vietnam war. 

of more recent stuff evoking trauma, naoki urasawa actually uses 9/11 as a moment in billy bat, as part of getting to questions of humanity and modernity and technology and progress. other anime dealing with terrorism, like GITS:SAC, the “brain scratch” episode of cowboy bebop, and of course urasawa’s 20th century boys, locate terrorism not through 9/11 (and the underlying racism and not-us-ness) but more often with these japanese cults like the ‘aum death cult that carried out the 1995 tokyo subway sarin attacks, and the changing landscape of terrorism in japan. we could point to shinichiro watanabe’s zankyou no terror (or terror in resonance? iunno) as a potential 9/11 parallel, and I think it’s got the 9/11 connections, but watanabe himself places it closer to the 1995 terrorist attacks. he even commented how much “darker” zankyou no terror is than the film he was influenced by (the man who stole the sun (1979)), directly citing the 1995 attacks as one reason the last 30 years have impacted japanese understandings of terrorism. more recently, there’s also been connections to the 3/11 disaster with kimi no na wa, where shinkai explores his perennial theme of personal connection across space and time via a form of natural disaster. outside of anime, there’s also a growing body of literature on 3/11 and music, which is super interesting and well worth a look if you’re interested.

fwiw, I think it’s interesting that both urasawa and watanabe are explicitly interested in western and specifically american culture, but through a japanese lens. and not the sort of “japanese lens” that leads to the americas of g gundam or yugioh, which are The Most American Ever, but a more nuanced representation that explores technology, human connection, and modernity. which is the sort of lens creators should try to do when engaging other cultures, at bare minimum. (/soapbox)

trauma isn’t often addressed directly, but allegorically or displaced: lindsay ellis has a great pair of loose canon episodes on 9/11 and how film evokes collective trauma. while she doesn’t talk about anime or japanese films, she uses bollywood as a way to talk about indirect expressions of nationalist trauma. in the second video, she suggests that, for countries like india working through their own terror attacks with mumbai in 2008 (the 26/11 attacks), it’s easier to use other countries’ or places’ or–I would suggest–fantastical trauma rather than directly address it. so bollywood used 9/11 to understand its own trauma. not everyone does this–and a lot of times, I doubt it’s done purposefully, at least initially. but it’s there implicitly, informing decisions of artists and content creators that sometimes doesn’t get revealed until placed under a critical eye. it’s why editing and getting outside or sensitivity readers is important! for japan, the parallels aren’t to other countries, but fantastical situations in japan with Very Heavy Symbolism ranging from akira’s totally-not-a-bombs to kimi no na wa’s processing of the 3/11 disaster via comet.

as for togashi, he uses world events and figures as ways of exploring his own interests (yu yu hakusho has multiple “wow capitalism suuuuuuuuucks” subplots with yukina’s arc and the dark tournament, plus the very anti-war/anti-hate/anti-capitalism/”humanity sucks but people [kuwabara] can be amazing” sentiments of the chapter black tape; while hxh’s chimera ant arc has both a-bomb parallels and north korea/china references on top of killua’s soapbox about how corrupt and terrible governments can be). the parallel between “humanity sucks” and “people can be so very good” threads throughout togashi’s work. but it also uses a very buddhist understanding of rebirth and reincarnation to get these points across, whether it’s the unconditional vore love of pouf and youpi giving themselves to rejuvenate mereum after he’s nuked or the reincarnations of former humans as ants. but all of it connects to togashi’s personal experiences of things happening to and by japan, whether it’s the invasion of and tension with taiwan, the boom and bust of the economy, or the militaristic push by parts of the government under koizumi and abe. that, layered on top of the trauma that informs a lot of japanese media, makes for a fascinating playground togashi is more than willing to dig into.

I suppose this is all a very, very long-winded way of saying that while it’s possible togashi could include a 9/11 parallel, I don’t think it’ll be tied to some september 2001 date in the hxh universe. if he uses it, it will be 1: through a togashi/japanese lens; 2: unattached to a particular date; 3: layered in dialogue with broader war and terror issues togashi’s interested in exploring.

if you’ve made it to the bottom: holy crap congrats, hello, talk to me about anthropology of media. and if you’re somehow still interested in more, here’s an brief list of sources I used on top of the ones explicitly referenced in the post:

Baffelli, Erica. “Media and religion in Japan: the Aum affair as a turning point.” Working paper, EASA. 2008. (media-anthropology.net)

Broderick, Mick (ed.). Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film. Routledge and Kegan Paul International, 2014. (google books)

Deamer, David. Deleuze, Japanese Cinema, and the Atom Bomb: The Spectre of Impossibility. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. (google books link)

Japan pulls troops from Afghanistan (npr, 2007)

Japan ends ban on military self-defense (time, 2014)

Japan’s 10 years since 9/11 (al-jazeera, 2011)

Krystian Woznicki (September 1991). “Towards a cartography of Japanese anime – Anno Hideaki’s Evangelion Interview with Azuma Hiroki”. BLIMP Filmmagazine. Tokuma Shoten. (archived here)

manga responses to 3/11 (nippon.com, 2012)

Saft, Scott, & Yumiko Ohara. “The media and the pursuit of militarism in Japan: Newspaper editorials in the aftermath of 9/11.” Critical Discourse Studies, 3(01), 2006. 81-101

[mschaefer-rt]

*Burke: Rhetoric as Division*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgtf5mdL4w0

In this entry I will be exploring the following critical question: How is Burke’s notion of the unification device evident in this artifact? How are each of the components at play? How is this unproductive/unethical for society?

To investigate these questions I analyzed a section of a speech made by former president Donald Trump. The speech was given in June of 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the campaign trail for the presidential elections. In the selected section of the speech, Trump is addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it has had on the United States. Burke’s unification device is incredibly evident in this artifact. Trump reinforces inborn dignity and symbolic rebirth through his tone and word choice. He clearly presents Chinese people as a scapegoat, as he blames them for the spread of COVID-19 throughout the United States. Finally, the content of his speech serves his commercial interests by encouraging certain behaviors among his followers. He aims to unite his followers in order to reinforce his own ideas about the COVID-19 pandemic, which have often been contrary to scientific evidence. He does this in attempts to build his image and promote his campaign ideas. Ultimately, this message is harmful in that it promotes inaccurate information about the COVID-19 pandemic, which could lead to higher infection and death rates. It also threatens the safety of Chinese Americans (and other Asian Americans) specifically, as they are the group being scapegoated.

The video clip shows Trump addressing the COVID-19 pandemic at his in-person rally. After new cases in the United States plateaued in May and early June, the United States was approaching a second surge by the end of June. Despite the devastating impact that COVID-19 had already had on the U.S. at that point, Trump continued his act of dismissing the pandemic and promoting anti-scientific ideas. 

Burke outlines the four features of the unification device: inborn dignity, projection device, symbolic rebirth, and commercial use. He constructed this theory for the purpose of analyzing Hitler’s rhetoric and how it aided his rise to power in Germany. More broadly, his theory can be used to analyze forms of rhetoric which attempt to bring a group of people together, often at the expense of another group. When a speaker stresses inborn dignity, the first component of the unification device, they are conveying their perceived superiority of themself, or of the group to which they belong. Burke describes the projection device, the second component, as “the ‘curative’ process that comes with the ability to hand over one’s ills to a scapegoat” (Burke, 2005). The third component, symbolic rebirth, refers to the mindset that the speaker is attempting to instill in their audience, or behaviors they are encouraged to engage in. The objective is that the audience will “get the feel of moving forward, towards a goal” (Burke, 2005). The final aspect of the unification device, commercial use, refers to the ways in which the leader uses their rhetoric to serve their own commercial interests.

Trump’s speech reinforces inborn dignity through its specific tone and word choice. The overall tone of this speech is prideful. In regard to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic he claims “I have done a phenomenal job with this.” His unwavering confidence in himself and his actions conveys a sense of calm to the audience, which they cling to during the uncertainty of the pandemic. Despite his aggressive and derogatory word choice, he maintains this laid-back attitude throughout the speech, allowing his audience to see him as someone they can relate to and count on. By painting himself as a leader who is never wrong, he is asserting his perceived inborn dignity. Not only does Trump attempt to convey his own inborn dignity, but also the inborn dignity of his supporters. This is displayed in the way that he interacts with his audience. Finally, the underlying patriotic themes in his speech also help him to assert his perceived superiority of Americans over Chinese people and people of other countries. By using these techniques which promote a sense of inborn dignity, Trump is encouraging his supporters to value his opinions over the discretion of scientists and other experts. As he says what they want to hear about themselves and about the pandemic, they are encouraged to band together in the face of perceived challenges. 

Through Trump’s word choice it becomes very clear that he blames Chinese people for the spread of COVID-19. He calls COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” and the “kung flu.” By closely associating the word “virus” with China, he is solidifying the link between them in the minds of his audience. The term “kung flu” draws upon stereotypes that many Americans believe about Chinese people and about Asian people in general. This rhetoric serves his purpose of deflecting the blame for the severity of the pandemic onto China. This is not something he simply does implicitly with his word choice, but something he states directly. At the beginning of the video he states, “that name [COVID-19] gets further and further away from China, as opposed to calling it the Chinese virus.” This statement makes it extremely clear that Trump intends to paint Chinese people as a scapegoat. The sense of connection between his followers becomes even stronger as they are united against their perceived common enemy.

Through his obvious attempts to discredit factual information about COVID-19, Trump is promoting his own self-serving, inaccurate ideas about the pandemic. This rhetoric falls into the third component of Burke’s unification device: symbolic rebirth. Trump encourages his audience to work toward a common goal by mentioning key concerns that have arisen across the U.S. in effort to determine how to best address the pandemic. This includes topics such as COVID-19 testing, closing borders, and opening schools. Regarding the increased availability of COVID-19 tests he states “when you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people! You’re gonna find more cases!” By calling testing a “double-edged sword,” he expresses his doubt in the value of identifying COVID-19 cases. There have been multiple other occasions throughout the pandemic where Trump called to stop COVID-19 testing in the United States. While his goals surrounding testing are a bit unclear in this particular speech, his overall goal is to encourage Americans not to worry about COVID-19. His relaxed attitude demonstrates to his audience that he is not worried about COVID-19 and that they shouldn’t be either. More specifically, at the end of his speech he calls upon people to take action (or to back actions that he has already taken): open schools, stop testing, close borders. 

The last component of Burke’s unification device is commercial use. Throughout his presidency, it was made abundantly clear that Trump does many things with the goal of boosting his image in mind. Commercialism is evident in the speech through the merchandise held by various attendees. Nearly every person in the background of the video is wearing at least one piece of Trump merchandise, often more than that. In this speech and in general, Trump also encourages Americans to ignore COVID-19 guidelines and recommendations from scientists. The fact that he has people attending an in-person, mostly maskless event during a pandemic proves this. While most other candidates in the presidential race chose not to hold in-person events for safety reasons, Trump continued to hold large rallies across the U.S. Him downplaying the severity of COVID-19 puts more money in his pocket by increasing attendance at his rallies.

Overall, Trump’s rhetoric is extremely unproductive for American society. Burke discusses how Hitler’s efforts to achieve unity by scapegoating Jewish people not only had a devastating impact on the Jewish community, but also on all of Germany as a whole. He explains: “But this unity, if attained on a deceptive basis, by emotional trickeries that shift our criticism from the accurate locus of our trouble is no unity at all” (Burke, 2005) Essentially, what he is saying here is that the actual problems Germany was facing politically and socially were exacerbated, in addition to severely harming Jewish people and other groups. There seems to be a similar effect with Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. By placing the blame for COVID-19 on China, the Trump administration has taken less responsibility for the handling of the pandemic. In addition, Trump’s scapegoating of Chinese people has made many individuals feel less personal responsibility to do their part in managing the pandemic. The sense of inborn dignity contributes to this mindset as well, as many individuals seem to be certain that COVID-19 will not affect them, despite the uncertainty of the disease.

More precisely, it must be recognized how Trump’s rhetoric has had a negative impact on Asian Americans specifically. The New York Times explains that there has been a rise in hate crimes directed toward Asian Americans since the beginning of the pandemic. Authors Hong and Bromwich (2021) explore the reasons why it is so hard to prosecute hate crimes, especially for Asian Americans. They explain, “last year, the attacks in New York City that did get prosecuted as hate crimes typically involved people blaming Asians for spreading the coronavirus, echoing the rhetoric of former President Donald J. Trump, who has referred to the disease as the ‘China virus’ and the ‘Kung Flu’” (2021). This provides a direct example of how Trump’s rhetoric has spread, impacting Americans both directly and indirectly. Not only is this rhetoric being repeated, but it has been directly associated with specific instances of hate crimes against Asian Americans. 

Drawing upon the ideas of Flores and Moon (2002) it becomes clear that working to resolve the harm caused by Trump’s rhetoric requires a multifaceted view of race. Races are socially constructed categories, but they have resulted in real-life implications for people of marginalized races. Despite the fact that there is no biological link between the likelihood of becoming infected with COVID-19 and race, many people still fear that they will be more likely to contract the virus from Asian Americans. Flores and Moon also talk about the limitations of seeing race through a Black/white lens. They explain: “In the black/white binary, or what Cameron (1998) calls “racial dualism” (p. 268), policies, laws, and discourse that have implications primarily for Latinas/os and Asian/Americans rather than for African Americans or for whites, can masquerade as racially neutral.” This perspective is important in understanding discrimination against Asian Americans and other issues facing the Asian American community. Some may not view Trump’s rhetoric as racist, since he is targeting Asian Americans, who are often seen through the “model minority” stereotype. While many people have called him out on this harmful language, there needs to be a greater understanding among Americans of how Trump’s rhetoric is directly contributing to an increase in violence toward Asian Americans.

Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has been disastrous for the American people. In his attempts to unify his followers under his agenda he has worsened the impact of COVID-19 on the United States. Specifically, his scapegoating of Asian Americans has led to an increase in hate crimes directed toward them. Ultimately, the events occurring over the past year have been somewhat out of human control. However, Trump’s rhetoric severely exacerbated these consequences. If the United States had a stronger president who was committed to promoting scientific facts, while also encouraging all Americans to treat each other with respect, perhaps the impact of the pandemic could have been lessened.

Burke, K. (2005). The Rhetoric of Hitler’s “Battle.” In Readings in Rhetorical Criticism (3rd ed.) (pp. 188-202). Strata Publishing Inc.

Flores, L. A., Moon, D. G. (2002). Rethinking Race, Revealing Dilemmas: Imagining a New Racial Subject in Race Traitor. Western Journal of Communication, 66(2), pp. 181-207.

Hong, N., Bromwich, J. E. (2021, March 18). Asian-Americans Are Being Attacked. Why Are Hate Crime Charges So Rare? New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/nyregion/asian-hate-crimes.html

Ruptly. (2020, June 21). USA: Trump calls COVID-19 'Kung flu' and 'Chinese virus' at Tulsa rally [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgtf5mdL4w0