From the Newer version of Merriam Webster:

a distortion so gross as to seem like caricature

 

 

In the United states, in the fall of 2018, in a political environment so polarized and toxic that writers are running out of adjectives,  bizarre finally ran into predictable.    A man now stands accused of mailing several crude homemade bombs to several well known American political figures and media members.  No one was injured, but most law enforcement people at the local and Federal level have reported they were all capable of real damage, had they been detonated.   

Both sides of the political spectrum have now reacted in predictable fashion-  the Left saying it was "proof"  that our current president  (small p)  has incited violence and is terrible and the Right saying it was all a set up,  and this fictional person and Fake bombs were all created by Democrats as a diversion before the upcoming mid term elections.   

What is truly strange and of course, entirely to be expected, is that the suspect is basically a Poster child for what the Media sees as the president's base of support: an angry disenfranchised older white male who feels the country has left him behind.   His devotion to the president and his message is so extreme and so disproportionate to  his previously apolitical life it honestly "looks like" he is a plant,  a fake target-  a caricature of what the Media expected to find.   More Napoleon Dynamite than Unabomber,  his personal and financial history is filled with several examples on  How Not to win friends and influence people.

If true (and will we ever know which part of his history is real vs. fabricated?) his history is also significant in that he waited more than 30 years to register to vote in Florida, but chose 2016 and the presidential election as that first time.    It was as if he had waited his whole life for a certain person to garner his attention.  

It seems too perfect,  too scripted to be true.   But it is 2018 and it is in fact, the United States,  so why the heck not.  

Car"i*ca*ture (?), n. [It. caricatura, fr. caricare to charge, overload, exaggerate. See Charge, v. t.]

1.

An exaggeration, or distortion by exaggeration, of parts or characteristics, as in a picture.

2.

A picture or other figure or description in which the peculiarities of a person or thing are so exaggerated as to appear ridiculous; a burlesque; a parody.

[Formerly written caricatura.]

The truest likeness of the prince of French literature will be the one that has most of the look of a caricature. I. Taylor.

A grotesque caricature of virtue. Macaulay.

 

© Webster 1913.


Car"i*ca*ture, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Caricatured (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Caricaturing.]

To make or draw a caricature of; to represent with ridiculous exaggeration; to burlesque.

He could draw an ill face, or caricature a good one, with a masterly hand. Lord Lyttelton.

 

© Webster 1913.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.