Words Matter

            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.

You can share this blog post on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Reader through the "share" function located at the top left-hand corner of the blog.