With his mendacity and increasingly virulent attacks on immigrants, Muslims, women, the press, the judiciary, the intelligence services, the F.B.I. - any group or institution that he finds threatening or useful as a scapegoat - Mr. Trump is attempting the Orwellian trick of redefining American reality on his own terms.
Interpretation
This quote critiques Donald Trump's strategy of manipulating reality to suit his narrative by attacking various groups.
In this quote, Michiko Kakutani highlights how Donald Trump's dishonest and aggressive rhetoric serves to distort the perception of reality in America. By targeting marginalized groups and institutions, he is seen as attempting to create a new version of truth, similar to the themes found in George Orwell's works, where language and meaning are manipulated for power.
In practice
During a political discourse, you might reference this quote to illustrate the dangers of spreading misinformation.
If a novelist had concocted a villain like Trump - a larger-than-life, over-the-top avatar of narcissism, mendacity, ignorance, prejudice, boorishness, demagoguery, and tyrannical impulses, she or he would likely be accused of extreme contrivance and implausibility.
I'm pretty omnivorous - in fact, I don't think of books in terms of genres. J. K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' books are no more Y.A. reading, to me, than John le Carre's 'Smiley' novels are spy stories.
For most of us, art is supposed to do something more than simply mirror the confusions of the world.
There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war.
Let us wage a moral and political war against war itself, so that we can cut military spending and use that money for human needs.
You will find that you cannot do without politicians. They are a necessary evil in this day and time. You may not like getting money from one source and spending it for another. But the thing for the school people to do is that if the politicians are going to steal, make them steal for the schools.
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.
The inability or unwillingness of citizens to differentiate between fake and authentic news is undermining a fundamental assumption of democracy: the informed voter.
When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
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