Watching President Trump speak to both Houses of Congress, two colorful Yiddish words kept floating into my mind. I believe that each captures an aspect of the reality of that unprecedented gathering that the English language fails to convey with the same level of nuance.
As President Trump spoke, I kept thinking that he’s a real shtarker, which is often translated as “tough guy”, but which carries considerable historical context. At Quora, Wolf Krakowski explains:
In Europe, studious, myopic Jews who spent their days warming a yeshivah bench were easy pickins for their loutish, violent anti-Semitic neighbors and were often attacked and beaten. Every community had their tough guy (shtarker = strong one) who could be summoned to prevent or mitigate a beating, by showing up….
There can be a less savory aspect to shtarkers when they turn their abilities to crime. During Prohibition, there were Jewish gangsters like Bugsy Siegel who were also called shtarkers because they were capable of and willing to use force to accomplish their aims, just like gangsters of any stripe. One of my vivid childhood memories is of my parents abruptly leaving a social gathering when a notorious gangster nicknamed Kid Cann entered the room, and they vowed they would never expose their children to a shtarker like that.
Image by Freepik.
President Trump is a shtarker of the first type, using his forceful personality to accomplish highly legitimate and desirable goals for our country. When needed, he will use force, as any shtarker must, but his preferred option is to have his foes recognize the futility of fighting him.
Overseas antagonists like Maduro of Venezuela no doubt regard him as a shtarker of the second type—that is, a gangster exploiting them, because he stands up for Americans. For their part, Democrats believe him to be the spiritual heir of Mickey Cohen, a thug who took over the rackets in Los Angeles, but as Trump has noted, he is the most-investigated person in the history of the United States. If there were any gangsterism in his past, he would have been indicted and convicted in the now notorious courts of New York State.
The congressional Democrats last night were classic shtoonks. The Free Dictionary defines shtoonk as:
slang A rotten, worthless, or utterly incompetent person; someone who is extremely petty, negative, and dishonest.From Yiddish.I just don’t understand why anyone would vote for a schtoonk like her. She has all but admitted to tax evasion, forPete’s sake!Jeff is managing the project? That schtoonk couldn’t manage his own sock drawer.I wish that schtoonk would bring a bit more to the office than his constant carping and negativity.
Refusing to applaud, much less stand and applaud a little boy who has recovered from brain cancer is pretty much a classic shtoonk behavior. So is yelling at a President as he addresses the assembled legislative branch.
I believe that last night the Democrats defined themselves to the American people as shtoonks, people with nothing of value to add, who are only interested in spoiling the fun of others. It was a catastrophe for them, one that they must be waking up to this morning.