What’s With All Trump’s Talk About “Draining the Swamp”?
Thanks, Obama.
Joshua Lott/Getty Images
In a press release from Oct. 17, Trump pledged to “drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.” He then tweeted: “I will Make Our Government Honest Again — believe me. But first, I’m going to have to #DrainTheSwamp.” Since then, Trump and his supporters have punctuated tweet after tweet with the hashtag. What are they talking about?ワシントンＤＣの沼を浚うをキャッチコピーにしているトランプ陣営です。政府を再び誠実［正直］にする。ツイターで＃ＤｒａｉｎＴｈｅＳｗａｍが人気なんですね。
Politicians have long colored calls to clean up government corruption with drain the swamp. In 2006, newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi pledgedto “drain the swamp” in Congress after 10 years of Republican control. After 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld committed to “drain the swamp” of terrorism; the phrase was a favorite of Bush administration officials during the ensuing wars they launched in the Middle East. Earlier, in 1983, President Reagan described his chief mission as “draining the swamp” of big government.
「沼を浚え、沼を排出しろ」は長いこと政治家にとって色よい標語だったのですね。共和党に人気のある政治的コピーなんですね。2006年の下院議長に選ばれたナンシー・ペロンは10年間の共和党支配の後で沼を浚う約束をした。９・１１後にドナルド・ラムズウェルド国務長官はテロリズムについて「沼を排水する」ことを約束した。あのブッシュも中東にのり出す時同じフレーズを使っているのですね。1983年のリーガン大統領も大きな政府の沼を浚うのが使命だと発言したのですね。
At its bottom, drain the swamp is a metaphor: If you drain the swamp, you eliminate the mosquitoes (or snakes and alligators, in other iterations) that breed disease. But, ironically, the original disease the expression referred to was the very thing Trump has built his campaign on: big business. Etymologist Barry Popik has traced drain the swamp back to the socialist movement of the early 20th century. In a 1903 letter to the Daily Northwestern, Winfield R. Gaylord, state organizer of the Social Democratic Party, precursor to Eugene Debs’ Socialist Party of America, wrote: “Socialists are not satisfied with killing a few of the mosquitoes which come from the capittalist [sic] swamp; they want to drain the swamp.” Another Wisconsin socialist, Victor Berger, provides a textbook example in 1912: “It cannot be avoided any more than malaria in a swampy country. And the [financial] speculators are the mosquitos. We should have to drain the swamp—change the capitalist system—if we want to get rid of those mosquitos.” The following year, labor and community organizer Mary “Mother Jones” Harris (and magazine namesake) deployed the phrase: “The capitalist and striker—both men are all right—only they are sick; they need a remedy; they have been mosquito bitten. Let’s kill the virulent mosquito and then find and drain the swamp in which he breeds.” The mosquitoes, for Harris, were the deeper, industrial forces that pit labor against bosses.沼を浚う。沼を排水する、はメタファ＝比喩です。沼を排水すると病気を引き起こす蚊（あるいは蛇、ワニなど）を排除することになる。［略］社会主義者は資本主義の沼が生み出す少数の蚊を殺すことに満足していない。沼を排水したいのだ。1912年には蚊以上のものを避けることができない。蚊は金融投資家です。それらの蚊を取り除くことを望むなら沼（資本主義制度）を変革しないといけない。
Drain the swamp isn’t just a vivid conceit with a revolutionary flair: It also alludes to the stubborn myth that Washington, D.C., was built on a swamp, which, fatefully, had to be drained to accommodate the new seat of American democracy and power. As historians and scientists have noted, only a tiny fraction of the District, for all its humidity, was ever swampy enough to require any such drainage; the ecosystem is actually closer to a tidal marsh. (Manage the tidal marsh, while perhaps better characterizing the day-to-day slog of government work, doesn’t have the same ring to it.) Myth aside, drain the swamphas proved sticky over the course of the 20th century, used by Democrats and Republicans, socialists and capitalists, to condemn whatever particular malady they believe is plaguing our government.
沼を排水しろは単に鮮やかな革命的なセンスの隠喩ではない。それは同時にワシントンＤ・Ｃがアメリカの民主主義と権力の新しい席を受け入れるために決定的は排水されなければならなかった沼の上に築かれたという頑固な神話をほのめかしている。歴史家や科学者も湿度が高く、排水施設を必要とするほど沼が多かったことを告げている。生態系は実際潮の湿地により近い。［略］ 民主党、共和党、社会主義者、資本主義者、何れも政府の癌になっていると彼らが信じる政治的弊害（障壁・腐敗・不正義もろもろ）を批判するために『沼を浚え、排水城』が使われる。
But leave it to Trump to drag this mucky metaphor even further into the mud. For Trump’s swamp isn’t just home to political cronies and crooks, whom the expression typically targets: The media, polling, leaders of his own political party, the abstract Establishment, and just about anything that challenges his view of the world, and himself, gets sucked into his vortex. A pro-Trump political cartoonist, Ben Garrison, illustrated some of the swamp things Trumpism wants to cleanse, from CNN rats to bloodthirsty globalism:しかしこの不愉快な比喩をさらに泥沼に引きこむのはトランプに任せて。トランプの沼は単に典型的に政治家がターゲットにする政治的な取り巻きや悪党に留まらない。それらはメインメディア、投票、彼自身の政党のリーダー、多様な既得権益者［権力者］、彼の世界観に挑戦する何でも含む、そしてトランプ自身を渦巻きの中に吸い込まれます。トランプ支持者の漫画家ベン・ガリソンが描いた漫画では、なんとＣＮＮネズミから血に飢えたグローバニズムまでトランプが浄化したいものを付け加えました。
Notice, though, the #MAGA-capped amphibian in Garrison’s cartoon. It’s Pepe, a cartoon frog appropriated as a symbol of white supremacy and much memed in support of Trump’s candidacy. And frogs, well, live in swamps—not to mention that you can’t drain a swamp like you empty a bath. You have to build special ditches and canals that redirect the water. But knowing that would require doing a little bit of homework.
しかし、ＭＡＧＡの帽子を被ったガリソンの漫画に注意！それはトランプ大統領候補の支持者がネットで拡散した白人至上主義の象徴として割り当てられている漫画の蛙ぺぺ（Pepe)である。蛙は沼に住んでいる。風呂桶の水を抜くように沼を浚うことはできない。水を再び戻すために特別な溝と管を作らないといけない。けれどそのことを知るにはほんの少し宿題をする必要があるだろう。
