Month: February 2021

Words matter. Take the word “burger,” for instance. That word generally means a patty of ground beef, served in a bun, with some variety of toppings and/or condiments. The burger I order at McDonald’s will look and taste different from the burger I order at Red Robin, and that one will look and taste different from the burger I’d be served at a five-star restaurant. The size, the quality and preparation of the ingredients, and the endless possibilities for toppings and sauces and garnishes will yield different culinary experiences–not to mention wildly different price tags–but the three basic components will be there. In other words, if I order a burger, I know I’m not going to get egg salad.

Yet in 21st-century political lingo, I can’t be so sure. Depending on whom I’m speaking with, a burger might very well be egg salad, and egg salad could be quiche. The biggest barrier to that elusive goal of unity we keep talking about is that we don’t agree on what “unity” means. To some, perhaps those in the cancel culture, it means something close to agreeing on every point. To others, you can think or believe whatever you want so long as you swear unwavering fealty to the cult leader that keeps your party in the headlines and assures more election wins. Cross him, and your fate might look somewhat like that of Liz Cheney whose position in the party had to be reconsidered after she cast her vote to impeach the cult leader. Fortunately, she escaped censure, but her future decisions will have to take into account what she now knows is a potential result if she again runs amok of party leaders.

If unity is even feasible in our country, we’re going to have to find some middle ground between the idealistic notion that we can agree on everything and the dangerous prospect of turning over control to a narcissistic authoritarian who would rather burn down the building than hand over the keys.

But finding that middle ground is going to require defining some other important words, such as “truth,” “fact,” “opinion,” “patriotism,” “treason,” and “high crimes and misdemeanors.” When two members of congress are placed on trial by their colleagues and their names used in the same sentence–one for having committed the offense of voting her conscience against the party leader and one for being a crazed, violent, conspiracy-theorist nutjob–we’re in deep waters. In the end, the right decision was made to allow Liz Cheney to keep her leadership position; but only 11 of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s GOP colleagues were willing to vote with the majority that stripped her of her committee assignments. Even more disturbing is the fact that she was given a standing ovation by some of her GOP colleagues in response to her behind-closed-doors, tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear “apology.”

What do the words “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” mean? They seem relatively straightforward but get a bit muddled when a lawmaker who swore that oath can harass a school shooting victim, disrespect a whole nation of people (Jews), and advocate assassinating her colleagues and her party even has to debate whether to allow her to serve on the education committee that oversees the schools in which shootings have happened and where students and parents of those schools have to be deeply wounded by her labeling their personal tragedies as “false flag operations” that didn’t really kill anyone. Her actions make it seem more that she is the enemy than that she is the defender against enemies. God help us all!

Let’s talk about the word “incite.” Merriam-Websters says “incite” means “to move to action, stir up, spur on, urge on.” Simple, right? None of the dictionary definitions include participating in the actions oneself. The world has held Hitler accountable for the deaths of over 6,000,000 Jewish people, along with some others whom he considered undesirable and inconvenient to his purposes, yet there is no record of Adolph Hitler personally rounding up Jews, taking them to camps, herding them into gas chambers, and releasing the noxious fumes that would end their lives. Charles Manson never murdered anyone, but he was convicted and sentenced on seven counts of first-degree murder, because it was judged that he ordered his followers to commit the murders. According to the Washington Post, “Manson was also convicted of two murders that he did physically participate in,” but he was not the one who dealt the fatal blows.

Both Hitler and Manson are considered mass murderers, yet their hands never killed anyone. On January 6, 2021, the sitting “president” spoke to a violent mob in Washington, D.C., encouraging them to “take a walk” to the Capitol. Using such incendiary statements as “We will never give up,” “We will never concede,” “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” “We will not take it anymore,” and “We will not let them silence your voices,” he aroused the crowd to such a pitch of fury that they marched to the Capitol and desecrated that national monument in unspeakable ways. Five people died as a result of the violence, two more Capitol police officers have since committed suicide, and more than fifty other officers were injured, some of them severely. One risks losing an eye, and another has lost three fingers. Yet our GOP lawmakers want to parse words and can’t be sure whether the “president’s” words actually caused the insurrection. Fortunately, the House impeachment managers have no such vocabulary limitations; they have cited the speech maker as “singularly responsible” for inciting the riot.

The article of impeachment against the person who made that inflammatory speech charges him with “inciting violence against the government of the United States.” The problem is it seems few lawmakers in the GOP knows the meaning of “incite.” Within hours after order had been restored to the Capitol building, 147 of the people who had narrowly escaped death that day voted to overturn the election results and retain in office the person who had incited the riot that might have cost them their lives. Some people have a lot of trouble connecting dots.

Apologists for the inciter of the January 6 insurrection argue that this is a free speech issue.  Jacob Sullum sums up that argument in a column published in Reason:

“Even advocacy of illegal behavior, the Supreme Court ruled in the 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio, is protected by the First Amendment unless it is both ‘directed’ at inciting ‘imminent lawless action’ and ‘likely’ to do so. It is hard to see how [that] speech, which urged his supporters to ‘fight like hell’ against an ‘egregious assault on our democracy’ as a joint session of Congress was convening to affirm Biden’s victory, meets that test.”

I’ve heard it argued that he said what he said and they did what they did. One cannot be held accountable for the other. No connection. Then let’s just take the word “incite” out of the dictionary.

And that brings us to the words “freedom of speech.” Does the first amendment guarantee every citizen the right to say whatever the hell we please, wherever and whenever we want to say it, with impunity? Not according to my understanding. I believe our founders and our Constitution’s framers wanted to insure citizens the right to speak their minds on the actions of their government without fear of punishment. Slander and libel have always been illegal, as is the much-cited incident of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded building unless one has actually seen flames or smelled smoke. No right is absolute; every one has moral and logical limitations. Although our founders could never have envisioned a Reality-TV star “president” or a QAnon, anti-Semitic, purveyor of dangerous theories member of Congress, I find it impossible to believe they would have written into our Constitution an amendment protecting their destructive speech.

Our two deeply polarized political parties defend their own actions and condemn their opponents’ actions using the same words. The January 6 rioters call themselves “patriots,” while those of us shocked and devastated by what we saw and have since learned consider their actions among the least patriotic we have ever witnessed.

New York Times columnist Stuart A. Thompson recently published an article documenting his three weeks inside a QAnon chat room. Among many other disturbing comments Mr. Thompson heard, he reports that Q followers consider themselves “fact-checkers” of mainstream media. Most of us look to such nonpartisan resources as Snopes, Politifact, and ProPublica, but whatever. The article begins with a series of several audio clips in which group members can be heard saying such things as “Behead ‘em all” and “Bring in the firing squad.” Mr. Thompson quotes another member: “If the Biden inauguration wants to come in and take your weapons and force vaccination, you have due process to blow them the [expletive] away. Do it.” These speakers are the people who want to be the arbiters of truth and fact.

The word “opinion” gets tossed around a great deal these days, as in everyone is entitled to have ‘em. Although in both general usage and the dictionaries, “opinion” means any held belief, regardless of its relation to fact, I would argue that in public discourse–particularly that which determines government policy–an opinion should be more than a whim or what one pulls out of a particular body cavity. In public discourse, “two opinions” or “two sides” implies two equally valid positions on a subject, both positions backed by fact and evidence. However, when one side’s positions are based on science, logic, and investigative journalism and the other side’s position is based on theories about baby-killing, blood-drinking Satan worshipers, space-laser-launching Jews who ignite forest fires, and the Clintons killing everyone from Vince Foster to JFK Junior, the two sides seem a bit unbalanced. And the possibility of finding common ground for dialogue is slim to none.

Decades ago, I read a book called “None Dare Call It Treason,” by John Stormer. In the 2020s, everyone dares call treason any act which violates their side’s belief system. Many of us believe our former “president” was guilty of treason–or at the very least high crimes and misdemeanors–for attempting to enlist foreign help in getting elected, attempting to overturn an election, and inciting a riot to stop legally cast ballots from being certified. Those who are okay with all of those actions, however, accuse the accusers of treason for their disloyalty to “dear leader.” How does one adjudicate the leader’s actions when words have become meaningless?

Other common controversies involve the word “socialism,” used mostly by people who don’t know what it means but think it sounds scary and menacing. “Right to bear arms” has been debated for decades and will continue to be, given the current climate, for years to come.

Words matter, but they become impotent when separated from the ideas or realities they represent. The philosopher Aristotle had a great deal to say about words. He believed “We use words as tokens in the place of things” because “it is impossible to converse by bringing in the actual things under discussion.” I have to believe Aristotle would agree that discussion itself becomes impossible when the disconnect between things and their words makes the words mere inane gibberish. He goes on to say, “Those who are inexperienced with the power of words are victims of false reasoning, both when they themselves converse and when they are listening to others.

    In the famous speech which William Shakespeare penned for his iconic character, Juliet laments having just learned her newfound love’s name, since she (a Capulet) was forbidden any contact with him (a Montague). But they had been getting along swimmingly before the name issue came up. Her lament begins with the famous words “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore [why] are you Romeo?” She continues “’Tis but thy name that is my enemy” and then asks: “What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot/Nor arm nor face nor any other part/Belonging to a man. O be some other name./What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” It’s all just words.

But words matter. For Romeo and Juliet, our fictional lovers, words led to their deaths. For the people who were killed and injured in the January 6 Capitol attack, the words spoken directly preceding the riot had the power to determine their fates. The words they had spoken and listened to for months before they rose to action formed their world view and justified their insurrection in the names of God and country. Yet many of our lawmakers deem those words so trivial as to be dismissed without consequence.

I wish I had a nice fairy-tale ending where we all come together for a group hug, join hands, sing a couple of rounds of Kumbaya, and promise to be loving and kind to one another from now on. But until we can agree that “up” means “up” and “down” means “down,” I don’t know how we get out of this. I just pray we’ll figure it out.