Joe HonickJoe Honick
Rush Limbaugh in 2011 once proclaimed, “One of my earliest philosophical pronouncements from the earliest days of this program was ‘Words mean things.’ We live in a time when many politicians utter words that are meant to beguile and fool, not communicate properly.”

Few intelligent folks would doubt that this notion expressed by Limbaugh bears truth. So, as Donald Trump continues his verbal acrobatic act regarding years-old references to women, experience tells us such attitudes don’t simply crop up suddenly on a bus during another ego-boosting TV appearance. They began somewhere, and as time and other ego-boosting events mount, they continue to infect our discourse.

Unfortunately, Trump’s crisis has taken center stage at a time when other urgently important policies and matters require far more of our attention, as the world is continuously plunged into suffering from both the natural forces of storms, hurricanes and the like, as well as the bloody ravages inflicted by a long list of formal governmental and revolutionary actions in the Middle East that cry out for some response as to how America might offer even modest relief.

Still, there’s a painful reality here. Trump’s supporters stand behind his recent defense of his shameful remarks, which took place when he was “only” just shy of 60 years of age, though the candidate himself still precedes many of his campaign statements regarding his opponent with words such as “crooked” and “corrupt,” as well as attacking her on a variety of deeply personal areas.

What these tactics and strategies emulate from the past should serve as a powerful reminder regarding what we’re faced with at this moment. While too many Americans are inexcusably lazy when it comes to looking into history and other realities that affect their lives, the Internet gives us simple means to investigate similar tactics from the 1930s that Hitler used to arouse his countrymen with fears of “certain” people and the urgent need to take steps that sounded a lot like the old KKK campaigns in the United States. That strategy, eventually aided with the likes of powerful U.S. PR giants like Carl Byoir, was titled the “Big Lie.” Told boldly and often enough, claims could become truth to the people willing to believe it, if only because they saw such assertions as confirmations of their own biases.

So comes now this historic election campaign, with the day of decision just around the corner, and the nation is weighted down by character-deflating utterances made by one of our candidates. Yes, Mr. Limbaugh, words do mean things. And what we have found is that the media has turned its focus on these titillating expressions instead of demanding that the candidates refocus instead on what will be done to better the nation and aid a world seemingly eager to start a new war.

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Joseph J. Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.