95,000 Words, Many of Them Ominous, From Donald Trump’s Tongue →

Patrick Healy and Maggie Haberman, writing for The New York Times:

The New York Times analyzed every public utterance by Mr. Trump over the past week from rallies, speeches, interviews and news conferences to explore the leading candidate’s hold on the Republican electorate for the past five months. The transcriptions yielded 95,000 words and several powerful patterns, demonstrating how Mr. Trump has built one of the most surprising political movements in decades and, historians say, echoing the appeals of some demagogues of the past century.

First, can I just say—I pity the interns who were responsible for the analysis of "every public utterance by Mr. Trump over the past week." Second, while I remain firmly entrenched in the "There's nothing to see here, folks" camp re: Mr. Trump's presidential run, this article raises a very important point—his words count. His words, at the very least, will have an effect on public discourse. Our still quite young democracy has a fierce majority view re: what constitutes ideas like "liberty" and "freedom." Democracies far older than ours have already dealt with these issues (dealt with; not solved) and have come to a general consensus regarding the preservation of personal freedom while existing within the boundaries of public freedom without the garish, petulant insistence on freedom as an absolute. It's something that this country, over the course of the next couple hundred years, will be forced to reckon with. Mr. Trump, if nothing else, is a harbinger of it.