How shocking is "And they went in and it was like a knife cutting butter"?

Trump used that phrase yesterday at the Roundtable on Justice Disparities in America (transcript). Context:

In Minneapolis, they went through three nights of hell. And then I was insistent on having the National Guard go in and do their work. It was like a miracle. It’s just everything stopped. And I’ll never forget the scene. It’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene. But to me, it was after you watched policemen running out of a police precinct. And it wasn’t their fault. They wanted to do what they had to do, but they weren’t allowed to do anything.... I said, “I’m sorry. We have to have [the National Guard] go in.” And they went in and it was like a knife cutting butter, right through, boom. I’ll never forget. You saw the scene on that road wherever it may be in the city, Minneapolis. They were lined up. Boom. They just walked straight. And yes, there was some tear gas and probably some other things and the crowd dispersed. And they went through it by the end of that evening. And it was a short evening. Everything was fine.... So I just want to tell you that we’re working on a lot of different elements having to do with law, order, safety, comfort, control, but we want safety. We want compassion. We want everything.

As I drove home from my sunrise run this morning...



... I had "Morning Joe" on the satellite radio, and he was riffing emotively on that phrase "it was like a knife cutting butter." Joe acted as though the phrase connoted murderously cutting into human flesh, and Who talks like that?!! In Joe's vivid nightmare, Trump is unfathomably evil. Joe said it's as if Trump were "running for President of the Confederacy" and Trump has decided to speak only to "angry white men — angry old white men."

Joe is 57, by the way, so that's a bit old, and he is also white and angry, so maybe he knows whereof he speaks, and yet he does not mean that he hears the siren call of Donald Trump.

But let's look at this phrase "like a knife cutting butter." It's an idiomatic expression! It means it was easy. You see the context. It doesn't mean the National Guard was sadistically injuring people. It means all they had to do was show up and walk straight in and everything worked out just fine.

It wasn't even a hot knife....



The inability to understand metaphor is, of course, highly selective. A commentator like Joe has to use what Trump gives him. He must scan the transcripts every day, looking for something to pretend to be anguished about.

How many protesters does it take to "pack" Washington D.C.?

According to The Washington Post, the city is "packed" when there are "more than 10,000."



That's the WaPo headline as displayed at Memeorandum. The headline is no longer written like that. Now, it is "'Defund The Police' painted on D.C. street as tensions among protesters flare."

Now, my question is: How bad did it get for WaPo to write "tensions... flare"?

More than 10,000 people poured into the nation’s capital on the ninth day of protests over police brutality.... The cause even led to flares of tension among Washington’s protesters, with some embracing a party atmosphere while others furiously spray-painted “Defund The Police” in giant yellow letters a block from the city’s “Black Lives Matter” display....

So there was some graffiti. What else? Turns out it was just a few protesters who were irked that others weren't acting angry:

Kenny Sway, a D.C. musician who had calmed thousands a few days before with his rendition of “Lean On Me,” pushed through the crowd, yelling at everyone he could see to stop dancing and start marching.

“This is not a festival!” he shouted into a microphone. “This is not a f---ing festival!”

The dancing demonstrators mostly ignored him, except for one woman who rolled her eyes and complained to a friend.

“Who made him God?” she asked. “You can’t police a protest.”

She took a puff of what appeared to be marijuana and again swung her hips to the music.

One street over, at the corner of H and Vermont streets, Zamzam Elzain stood on her tiptoes, lofted a sign reading “Silence is betrayal” and yelled desperately at the people meandering by with strollers and cigarettes and, it seemed, little conviction....

“If this is a protest, we get an F!” she yelled at passersby. “This is not supposed to be a block party!”

A man looked up, briefly, then returned to the bag of chips in his hand.

It sounds like the tension was about the lack of sufficient tension!

Other confrontations unfolded as night fell.

So... other than the confrontation about the crowd not being confrontational enough... okay...

There's really only one more "tension" vignette: A white protester guy tells a black Secret Service agent that he ought to quit his job. The agent retorted: "What does your white privilege taste like?"

UPDATE: WaPo changed the headline again. Now, it's "Protesters throng D.C., vowing to be heard after George Floyd’s death." It still hasn't captured what's in the article! There are fascinating vignettes in the article, which I've tried to highlight. I'd like to compliment whoever wrote them. I see the article was written by "Samantha Schmidt, Jessica Contrera, Rebecca Tan, Hannah Natanson and John Woodrow Cox." But I'm going to assume that what I'm enjoying there was written by John Woodrow Cox — not because he's the only man on that vast committee — "vast" is satire — but because when I mouse over the names, his is the one that gets "Enterprise reporter with a focus on narrative journalism." I don't know what "Enterprise reporter" means, but I think what I'm enjoying is "narrative journalism."

ADDED: Wikipedia says: "Enterprise journalism is reporting that is not generated by news or a press release, but rather generated by a reporter or news organization based on developed sources. Tied to 'shoe-leather' reporting and 'beat reporting,' enterprise journalism gets the journalist out of the office and away from the traditional news makers."

And: "Narrative journalism, also referred to as literary journalism, is defined as creative nonfiction that contains accurate, well-researched information.... Mainstream newspaper publications are still wary of supporting narrative journalism too much due to time and space constraints, and will often print the occasional narrative in a Sunday features or supplemental magazine." The names Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe come up.

AND: Here's a piece written by John Woodrow Cox solo — in WaPo 3 days ago — "‘I’m black before I’m anything else’: A police officer’s passionate exchange with protesters."

“My heart walks with you guys because I’ve been this,” Watts told them, pinching his skin, “since the day I came out of my mama. … I’m proud of each and every one of you guys.”

“Keep marching,” he continued. “Do it for me. Do it because right now I’m here and I can’t do what you’re doing. But understand, my heart is over here with you guys.”