Republicans Bring the War Home

Images can be metaphorical too

Al Drago for The New York Times

When I saw this picture in the NYT the other day, it was a visual metaphor for me.¹

Thank you, Susan Collins, for at least showing everyone who you really are: a spineless, conniving, power-mad, old, sick woman who clings to your party of hate that is destroying what I hold dear - freedom and the America where I live today but not by choice.

Trumpernation

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

—Martin Niemöller

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists

1. A metaphor qualitatively leaps from a reasonable, perhaps prosaic, comparison to an identification or fusion of two objects, the intention being to create one new entity that partakes of the characteristics of both. Metaphors may perform varied functions, from the mere noting of a likeness to the evocation of a swarm of associations. Many critics regard the making of metaphors as a system of thought antedating or bypassing logic.

Metaphor is the fundamental language of poetry, although it is common on all levels and in all kinds of language. Many words were originally vivid images, although they exist now as dead metaphors whose original aptness has been lost—for example, nightfall is a dormant image. In addition to single words, everyday language abounds in phrases and expressions that once were metaphors. “Time flies,” for example, is often traced to the Latin phrase “Tempus fugit,” as condensed from “sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus” in Virgil’s Georgics. Nearly two millennia later, Edward FitzGerald, in his 19th-century rendering of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, constructed a new metaphor on the foundations of this older, stock metaphor:

The Bird of Time has but a little way 
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing

https://www.britannica.com/art/metaphor