It was a brief spot, just under 90
seconds, on National Public Radio’s mid-day news program, “All Things
Considered.” A post-script to a longer story. You would miss it if you walked
momentarily to another room. So I want to dwell on it here, for it was simply,
calmly powerful.
The NPR reporters had been covering
the awful events at the U.S.-Mexico border, including Attorney General Jeff
Sessions’ narrowing of the criteria for seeking asylum and the separating of children
from their parents. These actions have been defended by various members of the
Trump administration and by President Trump himself with their typical word
salad of denials, deflections, counter punches, and lies. One element in this
linguistic barrage is the clam that child-separation is not an administration
policy, but the result of regrettable laws established under previous
administrations. We are a country built on laws, they claim, and we have to
follow the laws. This is unfortunate for the families, but we have no choice.
No matter that over the last few months, key administration actors, including
Chief of Staff John Kelly, said on the record that family separation is in fact
being used as a deterrent to migrants. No, insisted Secretary of Homeland
Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, on June 17, 2018 “we do not have a policy of
separating families at the border, period.” So here we are with the
all-too-familiar Trump fare of contradictions, reversals, and edicts—all
delivered with propulsive finality.
Now to that brief spot on NPR. Host
Mary Louise Kelly quoted Secretary Nielsen’s statement and then examined it.
Her line of inquiry is worth quoting in full. If you’d like to hear it, click
[here].
MARY LOUISE KELLY: Here’s what Secretary
Nielsen told NPR’s John Burnett when he interviewed her on May 10 and asked
about family separation.
KIRSTJEN NIELSEN: Our policy has not
changed in that if you break the law, we will refer you for prosecution.
KELLY: Nielsen went on—if you're an adult
with a family and you break the law, you'll be prosecuted. And then she said...
NIELSEN: Operationally, what that means is
we will have to separate your family.
KELLY: We will have to separate your
family. Previous administrations looked at the same law, though, and decided
not to separate families. What the administration argues is that when an adult
is prosecuted, they go into federal custody. And any children in tow can't be
detained in a federal lockup. So the separation is the result of the new zero
tolerance policy, not a policy in and of itself.
Well, we looked it up. Merriam-Webster
Dictionary defines policy as a course or method of action selected from among
alternatives. The Trump administration has selected and is now defending a
course of action—in other words, a policy. You can call it semantics, splitting
hairs over which word applies. But words matter, which is why NPR is referring
to the Trump administration policy of separating families at the U.S. border.
Political language, as George Orwell
reminded us in the middle of the last century, is heavy in distortion and
double-speak. The Trump administration does not simply indulge in these
linguistic sins; it is built on them. Thankfully, the news media are
increasingly calling the administration on their lies and denials. What struck
me about this NPR broadcast was that Ms. Kelly also provided listeners with a
short course on semantics and logic. Our country needs much more of this,
methodologies to help us think and talk clearly in the face of the violent
incoherence transmitted daily from the White House.
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