In his recent successful presidential campaign and in his first month in office, President Donald Trump has used a remarkably effective rhetorical device that may best be described as "incendiary common sense."
The clearest example from the race, and where it became most clear, was the infamous allegation Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating cats and dogs. There was a three-step process in play.
First, liberals went absolutely crazy, calling Trump a racist for even suggesting it could be happening. Having gone to Springfield, the truth of the claim remains inconclusive to me, but that didn’t matter, because Step 2 was actual reporting about what was precisely happening in Springfield.
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Finally, Step 3 came when the American people asked themselves, "Well, why did we think dumping 20,000 Haitian migrants in a town of 50,000 was a good idea?"
Obviously, it was a horrible idea, as I learned from the residents there who never asked for it.
By the time the fires of outrage were extinguished, and the smoke cleared, Trump was sitting on the high ground of common sense. Suddenly, Democrats had to try to defend something indefensible.
We see something similar unfolding now with DOGE. At first, the Trump White House leaned into the idea that Elon Musk and his merry band of boy genius coders would run roughshod over government spending. This led directly to screeching and howling about how Musk is an unelected autocrat, or the real president.
But once again, by the time the screaming fades, Americans are left asking why they are funding trans theater companies in Ireland or organizations that actively censor American citizens through agencies like USAID.
Once again, Trump lands on the side of common sense.
For another example, take Trump's referring to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau the "Governor of Canada." The snark got everyone's attention, and when it wore off, we were left with very real and common sense questions about why our trade relationship with our neighbor to the north is so imbalanced.
Common sense is a very ancient concept. Aristotle refers to it in his works on rhetoric by insisting that public speakers have a responsibility to address widely held attitudes. "Common" here doesn’t mean ordinary, it means shared.
Later philosophers would argue that common sense is the mechanism by which our five discrete senses create our reality. Others think of it as that which we all just know without thinking about it too much.
But of all the things common sense is or isn’t, one thing it does tend to be is a bit dull. How interesting can it be to say something 80% of people already take for granted?
This is where incendiary common sense becomes essential. What Trump manages to do, time after time, is to frame a common sense issue in a way that is so offensive to Democrats, or seems so over-the-top or ludicrous, that they cannot resist attacking him for it.
Trump is not the first important American to employ the tactic of incendiary common sense; that honor would go to Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet titled with those two words helped set the flame of the American Revolution.
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Paine applied rules to the common sense of freedom and liberty with such incendiary rhetoric and such a forceful call to action, that even those wary of revolt had no choice but to take note of it.
And here we are again.
Paine wrote:
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general Favor; a long Habit of not thinking a Thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of Custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more Converts than Reason.
Indeed, time has made converts of Paine’s grateful descendants ready and welcome for the stern accounting Trump is ready to give our government.
But let us not be too harsh in this accounting. Let us maintain our just concerns for the poor and indigent. Conservatives, myself included, have long sought this power, and it was well won.
My grandfather fought in World War II. He never got to go to college, but he put three kids through, and when I was in prep school he told me, "God made you smart. You didn’t earn that. Never use it against people who don’t have it."
Donald Trump, Thomas Paine, and my grandfather were all really saying the same thing. Use common sense, and be loud about it when you have to. And always use it for those in need.
We haven’t had common sense in some time. If Trump has to set some fires to restore it, I’m all for it.
