Carnage ~ word of the day

After the carnage at Sandy Hook in December 2012

"Carnage" seems to be the word of the day.  I got online this morning to see the top two "blogs I read" on my sidebar were:

1. Paul Krugman, The Opposite of Carnage, 1 hour ago
2. a church for starving artists, Carnage and Me, 13 hours ago

Eventually, I learned that Trump had said yesterday in his speech, “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now."  Twitter had fun with his use of the word, and Dictionary.com reported that the word spiked in lookups.  In case you're interested, here's their definition of the word:

Carnage = the slaughter of a great number of people, as in battle; butchery; massacre.

Merriam-Webster.com also saw a spike in lookups.

"Carnage ('great and usually bloody slaughter or injury, as in battle') spiked in lookups on January 20th, 2017, following President Donald Trump’s use of the word in his inauguration speech.

Okay, did I miss it?  Who was slaughtered yesterday?  Merriam-Webster explained why the word was trending.

"Trump’s use of the word was a decidedly figurative one, as he appeared to not be referring to actual bloodshed, but rather to what he feels is a social and economic desolation."

Ah!  So an American carnage is decidedly different from, say, carnage in Syria or even in Sandy Hook.  The Guardian reported:

"The new 45th president of the United States coined the sinister phrase 'American carnage' to vividly conjure an image of inner cities he said were afflicted by crime, a political elite that had forgotten ordinary people, and a landscape of rusted factories like tombstones."

After the headline "President vows to end 'American carnage'," BBC News said:

"The Trump administration has only listed six issues on the [White House] website:  energy, foreign policy, jobs and growth, military, law enforcement and trade deals.  Critics pointed out the revamped site made no mention of civil rights, LGBT rights, healthcare or climate change."

Let me end with this from Carnage and Me:

"Why do our leaders – especially those with zero military experience – so brazenly threaten war?  DJT on December 22, 2016 on Twitter said that 'The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.'  None of us has yet witnessed the carnage that a 21st Century nuclear war could bring."