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.
The Republican nominee-to-be, of course, is also a young man. But his approach is as old as McKinley. His party is the party of the past. His speeches are generalities from Poor Richard's Almanac. Their platform, made up of left-over Democratic planks, has the courage of our old convictions. Their pledge is a pledge to the status quo-and today there can be no status quo.
Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
Those that deem politics beneath their dignity are doomed to be governed by those of lesser talents.
To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament-this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.
Marijuana legalization's income may help fund education, prevention and treatment programs for harder drugs. What's clear is that the four-decade-old U.S.-backed war on drugs is not working, and that it's producing tens of thousands of dead across the hemisphere, without significant gains in reducing consumption. Experimenting with new weapons to weaken the cartels may be better than doing nothing.
Despite the present, temporary interests that Israel has in common with France and Britain, you ought not to forget that the strength of Israel and her future are bound up with the United States.
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