Originally published at: Minnesota teachers explode in laughter watching JD Vance in debate (video) - Boing Boing
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Ha, their reaction is awesome. It gives me hope!
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It makes me think of the chapter in Oliver Sacks’ book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, where he describes seeing aphasic patients react to seeing Reagan on TV. Aphasics, as Sacks describes them, lack the ability to process language, but are very sensitive to tone. The ones in his care found Reagan’s speech hysterical:
“… it was the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice, which rang false for these wordless but immensely sensitive patients. It was to these … glaring, even grotesque, incongruities and improprieties that my aphasic patients responded, undeceived and undeceivable by words. This is why they laughed at the President’s speech.”
He goes on to describe another patient with a condition called tonal agnosia, who has the opposite problem: she was insensitive to tone, but highly attuned to language. Her verdict was even more damning:
‘He is not cogent,’ she said. ‘He does not speak good prose. His word-use is improper. Either he is brain-damaged, or he has something to conceal.’
I can’t even imagine how either of these two groups would react to Donald Trump. I am neither aphasic nor agnosic, but Trump’s speeches strike every false note imaginable to me. I think that the only people who can watch Trump speak and not be instantly aware of his insincerity are people who’ve deliberately chosen to let themselves be lied to, and so don’t care about his crude attempts at manipulation.
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Usually because it supports their racist, misogynist, omniphobic worldview.
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