"Eat their young"
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In "Trump Short-Circuits in New Video as Concerns Grow Over Cognitive Decline", Meidas Touch 10/14/2023, Brett Meiselas presents the apparent mis-use of an idiom as evidence of neurodegeneration:
A new video posted by Donald Trump to his social media account is the latest in a series of clips of the former president that have raised concerns about his rapidly deteriorating cognitive abilities.
In the video, Trump launches into a deranged rant accusing his former Attorney General Bill Barr, Senator Mitt Romney and former Republican Congressman Paul Ryan of conspiring with big donors and two GOP candidates running against him.
Trump says they are disloyal losers with no talent and that they “eat their young” by opposing him and that “Republican Nation” must not listen to them.
"But remember, Republicans eat their young. They really do. They eat their young. Terrible statement. But it's true," Trump said in a dark room where he records his videos. […]
It's possible that Trump's teleprompter said that Republicans "eat their own" and that Trump misread the phrase twice in just a couple seconds […]
But what is extra sad is that Trump's handlers seem to have completely lost control of the criminally indicted, disgraced GOP candidate. They had an opportunity to reshoot this prerecorded video prior to posting it, yet they didn't even bother.
The coverage by Caleb Howe at MEDIAite, "Trump Rages About Republicans Going After Other Republicans in Video Absolutely Trashing Other Republicans", discusses Trump's diatribe without noticing any problem with the idiom, and provides this transcript of the Truth Social post in question:
"I understand candidates that are losing by 57 to 70 points are getting together with RINO Paul Ryan, Mitt the loser Romney, Bill no guts or no talent Barr, and some broken political investors that will soon come to me, as most others already have. These failed candidates should have started by campaigning effectively, which they didn’t because they really don’t have the skill or the talent to do so. Romney, who today couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in the great state of Utah, should have beaten an absolutely failed first term Obama. Should have beaten him very easily. If he and RINO Paul fought as hard against Obama as they do against President Donald J. Trump, they would never have lost. They would have beaten Obama. But remember, Republicans eat their young. They really do. They eat their young. Terrible statement, but it’s true. And that’s the problem with so many in our party. They just don’t have the loyalty and the strength to stick together. They go after people who are on their side rather than the radical left Democrats that are destroying our country. These people are losers, and the Republican nation must stop following their failed ideas and policies. They only help the worst president in the history of the United States. The most corrupt president. The most incompetent president. Crooked Joe Biden. We don’t want to help him. We have to get him out of office. The Republican Party should unify and they should unify fast. We need Joe Biden out of there. He’s destroying America. Thank you very much."
The corresponding audio:
The "eat their young" phrase originated in factual descriptions of practices among animals, recently picked up on the internet as a source of click-bait, as in this 2023 page that attributes the practice to polar bears, sand tiger sharks, chickens, prairie dogs, lions, chimpanzees, and blenny fish.
But there are plenty of metaphorical extensions to humans, such as teachers and FBI agents. By far the most common current metaphorical extension to humans seems to involve nurses, where the phrase has been used for decades to describe bullying and hazing among nurses internationally.
As the metaphor's origin would suggest, the human victims in all of these extended uses are new teachers, new agents, new nurses, etc., bullied or hazed by older, more established members of their profession.
There are a few past examples in politics, e.g. Jim Zirin, "Is this fair treatment for Cuomo?", NY Daily News 8/10/2021:
Cuomo is said by The New York Times to have no friends, and perhaps this is true. So true that Democrats I know repeat this as though it were a mantra. Certainly, Cuomo has no friends in the mainstream media. He has insulted them too much for too long. He has no friends in the Democratic Party. No surprise there; Democrats like to eat their young, and their old, when the political winds turn. Just ask Al Franken.
But note that Zirin feels the need to add "and their old", to reflect the fact that Al Franken was not exactly a novice when he was metaphorically cannibalized.
So to refer to criticisms of an older candidate by younger candidates as examples of how "Republicans eat their young", the metaphor has to be bleached one step further, losing the whole olds-eat-youngs thing. Trump plausibly feels that Romney and Ryan represent a Republican political establishment that he is challenging, but he's apparently reacting to criticisms from currently-active rivals for the presidential nomination, who are all younger than he is — and perhaps also to recent stories about those rivals appealing to big donors.
It's not clear to me whether Trump's use of the phrase is effective political communication, but there's no reason to consider it a sign of dementia.
Update — RfP in the comments points us to the 1972 Funkadelic album America Eats Its Young (song lyrics here). And Joe and Chester Draws points to the much older "Saturn devouring his children" meme.
Barbara Phillips Long said,
October 15, 2023 @ 11:39 am
Comparing Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric over time, I think, can make a case that his intellect is deteriorating. But the “eat their young” phrase simply seems to be part of his tendency to use violent imagery in general.
From an Oct. 4, 2023, discussion of Trump’s recent and earlier uses of violent language:
Laura Barrón-López:
Violent rhetoric, again, is a feature, not a bug, of Trump's campaigning style. It goes back to 2016, Amna, when he used to use a lot of violent rhetoric during his campaign.
But, recently, there has been, over the course of the last two weeks, an increase. And so if we break it down, on September 22, Trump suggests that General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, should be executed.
September 29, he mocks the assault on Paul Pelosi. That was a violent political attack, September 29, as well in that same speech, calls for shoplifters to be shot on sight. You will remember he said in 2020, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.
And then, on October 3, he said — which was just yesterday, Amna, when speaking to right-wing media, he said, migrants are — quote — "poisoning the blood of our country."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-amplifies-violent-rhetoric-against-his-perceived-enemies-as-civil-fraud-trial-begins
J.W. Brewer said,
October 15, 2023 @ 1:30 pm
A news story treating a politician's use of a metaphor or idiom with which the specific journalist had not been previously familiar as evidence of cognitive impairment may be even worse journalistic practice than treating it as a mysterious "dog whistle."
RfP said,
October 15, 2023 @ 1:46 pm
The title of America Eats Its Young, a 1972 album by Funkadelic, was that era’s version of a meme—in certain circles, anyway, given that we didn’t have the kind of pervasive social media that exist today.
So the use of this phrasing by someone of a certain age to call out an institution, organization, etc., isn’t at all unprecedented.
It was, I suppose you could say, “in the air.”
Mark Liberman said,
October 15, 2023 @ 1:57 pm
@J.W. Brewer:
Spiraling into ironical space about faulty evidence of cognitive impairment, Senator Tommy Tuberville has recently been widely mocked for slipping down airplane steps, based on his remarks last summer alluding to a time when Joe Biden stumbled. The video of Tuberville's slide was apparently from 2014, so this was some kind of time-reversed karma…
John Swindle said,
October 15, 2023 @ 3:28 pm
Trump's cognitive faculties aren't perfect. Neither are mine or anyone else's. To me the more interesting (and harder) question is what role his language plays in Trumpian fascism. If he hadn't gone into politics he'd be just another con man and celebrity jerk. We don't get so exercised about those. How and to what extent does his use of language make the difference?
AntC said,
October 15, 2023 @ 5:10 pm
@JS How and to what extent does his [Trump's] use of language make the difference?
(I can't speak for Trump's rhetoric before he appeared on the political radar. Is it possible his involvement with WWE amped up the level of violence in his rhetoric? Did his scriptwriters on 'The Apprentice' favour violent imagery? Or has the American right/frontier/gun-rights mentality always used those terms?)
The 'difference' it makes is that some of his followers don't seem to understand this is rhetoric/metaphor, and bring actual guns to storm the Capitol. (Or to investigate child prostitution rings at pizza parlours.) Indeed I'm not sure Trump himself understand it's rhetoric/metaphor. Perhaps it isn't?
MTG and Lauren Boebert (amongst others) seem to think it appropriate on campaign videos to be shown firing guns. (Again, I haven't been following closely enough to know if this is particularly novel.) Speaking from the civilised world, I find it repugnant.
Joe said,
October 15, 2023 @ 7:06 pm
A few years ago, political commentators in the US were tossing around an old quote as an internet meme: "like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children" ("A l'exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants"). Usually they left Saturn out of it, and detailed comparisons with the French Revolution were not the point, just a cute way to talk about political infighting. I'm extremely online and haven't heard it in years, but my guess is Trump finally just heard it for the first time and now it's stuck in his head.
J.W. Brewer said,
October 15, 2023 @ 8:02 pm
Attitudes toward guns vary sharply by region in the U.S., so local candidates (who hopefully have correctly assessed the voters of their locality, although misjudgments are possible …) are probably more prone to use regionally-appropriate gun imagery, whereas it can be inherently trickier for a national candidate to do so. OTOH less than 20 years ago the Democratic candidate for President of the United States tried to show that he wasn't some sort of left-wing extremist by deliberately arranging to be photographed toting a gun — a shotgun with which he'd just been hunting waterfowl in the company of a Congressman, thereby trying to show that he was no threat to the interests of responsible non-extreme gun owners who liked to hunt. This old news story has one of the photos: https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/2004/10-22/13856_kerry_hunts_for_better_image.html.
JPL said,
October 15, 2023 @ 8:22 pm
Why is it that the approach to political participation that we call "the right" (illiberalism, authoritarianism, dominance-seeking, uncompromising, in short, "the hard line") tends to resort, almost as a first response, to violence, and solution by violence? Haven't they noticed that it is the approach of striving toward unity, equality of all members, mutual respect, give and take, adherence to ethical principles in general, i.e., the approach of Ghandi, MLK, Mandela, that actually works? An old African proverb always comes to mind, and I'll translate it freely, "If a husband and wife both take the hard line, they'll burn down the house together".
(Responding more to the comments (e.g., AntC) than to the spectacle of the evident unravelling of a character whose cognitive abilities were never that high to begin with, to put it mildly.)
Seth said,
October 16, 2023 @ 12:10 am
@John Swindle – I believe some of why we get so exercised is that Trump does not talk like an educated professional, even though he is one, and comes from a wealthy background. He talks, I think very deliberately, like a blue-collar manual laborer. And this seems to be a part of something which drives much of the pundit world into a frothing rage at him, for being successful in politics while doing it. There's a furious classism that seethes under the surface in many critiques, even though Trump is in fact from the upper-class. But he doesn't send higher-class social signals, while almost all politicians do send them. One such signal is again, speak in the linguistic "code" of the educated professional. People who don't do this are often derided as stupid, and sometimes if older, demented.
Chester Draws said,
October 16, 2023 @ 12:41 am
My immediate reaction was — but that's the whole "Saturn eating his children" thing.
I would generally, if I heard that expression, thing more highly of a person.
Does Goya get to counted as suffering dementia now?
James Wimberley said,
October 16, 2023 @ 5:34 am
Goya's black paintings are often cited as evidence that he was profoundly depressed at the time. The "Fight with Cudgels" still fits the TV news from Gaza. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Francisco_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_Duelo_a_garrotazos.jpg/1920px-Francisco_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_Duelo_a_garrotazos.jpg
Jarek Weckwerth said,
October 19, 2023 @ 3:50 pm
@ Seth: Spot on!