Antics or Semantics?

Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no.

Anything more than this comes from the evil one.

– Matthew 5:37 (CEB)

As Gal Beckerman recently wrote in an article in The Atlantic, “The Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have been twisting themselves into semantic pretzels to avoid answering this very easy question with the word war, although it is very clearly a war.” And, if you’re like me, you’ve noticed.

Maybe this is an effort to get around the very clear prerogative of Congress to declare war. Maybe it is trying to let this President engage in what he already has done in Venezuela with higher stakes in Iran, all under the cover of the post 9/11 shift from the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which allows for the mechanisms of war against terrorists and their supporters, and has been interpreted since that time to allow prolonged conflict, often instigated by the US, against other nations. The definitions of this have been stretched tighter than a rubber band around a beach ball.

Yet this is the nature of politics and public policy, isn’t it? We attack trans youth seeking to participate in sports but call it “protecting women.” We call unnecessary regulations on everyone trying to access social safety net programs like SNAP “fighting fraud,” though the statistics say that fraud is a very low percentage of SNAP. And, of course, there is the example of calling the 2020 election “stolen,” despite all evidence to the contrary.

George Orwell, whose words are so pertinent to this moment, once wrote that, “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity…In our age there is no such
thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself
is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia…one ought to
recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language,
and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal
end.”

When Jesus is teaching the mass of people in Matthew’s gospel, what we call the “Sermon on the Mount,” he is teaching them a moral foundation that is, at times, quite contrary to the one they know. He hits them with a series of, “You have heard it said” statements, which he follows with, “but I tell you…” These are corrections or alterations, perhaps reformulations of the accepted common wisdom. And in this midst of these he tells them,

Again you have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago:

Don’t make a false solemn pledge, but you should follow through

on what you have pledged to the Lord.

But I say to you that you must not pledge at all.

- Matthew 5:33-34 (CEB)

This is where he tells them, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” And it should be noted that he says this alongside things like, turn the other cheek, don’t refuse those who wish to borrow from you and love not only your neighbor but your enemy, too.

It feels like one of the reasons that we have all of the semantic games is the same reason that we don’t often do the other things that Jesus teaches.

It’s hard.

It’s hard to love even your neighbor, let alone your enemy. And it is hard to turn the other cheek when we’re raised in a culture of retribution. It is hard to give to anyone who asks when we so want to critique why they need to ask in the first place.

And, it is hard to own up to selfish, greedy, or immoral actions when they might benefit us. We’d rather just massage the language.

After all, if it sounds good, then it is, right?

This seems to be the operative strategy of politics. It isn’t to make a good argument, to advocate for a just public policy, or even to solve real problems. It is to make your point as loudly as possible while also maintaining your political positioning. You fight like hell for your position, until the polls say otherwise.

Maybe this is the semantic antic right now – designed to continue the actions while acknowledging how unpopular war is. This administration ran on an “anti-war” platform, but have, since being in power, ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as any President in modern history. But if you never say “war,” then you’re still anti-war, right?

This is what Orwell warns about with his anti-authoritarian lessons. The decay of language – words don’t mean what they clearly mean – is a major part of the effort. We can see war happening. We know it is happening. But we’re being told it isn’t happening. What are you going to believe? Your eyes?

Whether it is the video footage of not one, but two murders of US citizens by federal agents in the streets of Minneapolis, or it is the declaration that we are, “only getting rid of the worst of the worst,” one section of this administration’s policy is glaringly dedicated to semantic deception.

And now, after successfully skirting a “military action” in Venezuela, which we don’t get to call regime change either, he strikes Iran with two carriers and an armada of air and naval force that is certainly what you’d bring to a war even if we won’t say the word. We won’t say it because no one, expect the people giving the orders, wants it. Again, Beckerman writes:

“Leaders are sidestepping the term not just to avoid liability, but because Americans clearly want nothing to do with what it signifies. For most people, after the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan, war is just another word for “quagmire.”

…Operation is much less fraught. It is preceded more naturally by the word successful. Many people associate operations with surgery, which can be dangerous, of course, but you’re usually unconscious while it’s happening. It sounds pretty painless. So does the more laparoscopic-sounding surgical strike, an outpatient procedure that pinches, but just for a moment.”

Only this is not what is actually happening. Just like residents of the Twin Cities or South Texas will tell you, the words don’t match the reality.

From social media to fake news to life in a world of what Stephen Colbert’s character called “truthiness,” where he asserted that anyone could read the news to you, but he would feel the news AT you, we are mired in a culture in which we want things to appear a certain way. Of course, the most genuine way to have something appear the way you want it to is to actually have it be that way, but we prefer the appearance to the reality. It appears, at times, that we prefer the lie to the truth.

And the wisdom of Jesus is that this leads no good place. It is the way of the evil one. Or, from the Greek, it is the poneros way, which does translate as evil, but can also mean full of hardships, annoyance and peril. It is derived from ponos, meaning pain or labor.

Draw what parallels you will.

We know that war is poneros. It always has been and always will be. What is also painful and leading us towards peril is the idea that we can be at war with our hands and feet, but somehow not be at war with our ears and eyes and mouth. It is a grave disservice to those risking their lives and a hardship among us that seeks to do evil but call it something else.