A Five-Dollar Word
There is an old Mark Twain saying – never use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent one will do. I am a believer in that. As an old educator, I’ve sat through far too many conferences when the teachers all used university class “education-ese” to parents and students who, through no fault of their own, just didn’t get it.
But there is one five-dollar word I love because it’s so descriptive. It’s the title of this essay: OBFUSCATION!! When I used it in an eighth grade class, all of the boys tittered – thinking it was one of “those” words, just because it ends in “ion”. But it isn’t. Webster defines it as: “to make obscure, throw into shadow”. Today’s essay has a lesson, and it’s not the definition of obfuscation (there will be no quiz at the end). It’s about the use of obfuscation as a political tactic and strategy.
Distracting from Death
It is clear what the crisis in America is today, and it’s not a lack of spelling words. I’m afraid we are becoming comfortable with 2000 people a day dying from the COVID-19 virus. The death toll appears nightly on the television screen, much as the “butcher’s bill” of Vietnam appeared in my childhood. Each night, we see more and more Americans succumbing to the illness. We hear of those we know, and some we loved, lost to the pandemic. But it seems to have stopped having the impact it had in those first few weeks, as if the today’s dead aren’t quite as important as those early victims.
We were over 85,000 dead this morning. If you’re the sitting President of the United States, intent on winning re-election in less than six months, it’s important to get America’s mind off of death. We may all want to “open up” and go back to work, but the President NEEDS us to go back to work. He needs chicken breasts in the supermarket, he needs restaurants open, and he needs the economy moving again. And he knows that Americans aren’t willing to risk death to do it. So he has determined to make those deaths “obscure, thrown into the shadow”.
How can he possibly do that? What could he possibly say to distract us from death?
Whose Facts
Well, the first thing he can do is get us to question the numbers. You can see it on social media over and over, from arguments about diagnosis to questions about Medicare reimbursement (“they’ll pay more if it’s Corona-Virus” states one). And they’ll try to make the death toll statistically insignificant, as if the tiny fraction of Americans dying isn’t really important. But, of course, it is. If the 2753 lost on 9-11 are important, if the 58,220 Americans who died in Vietnam are important, then surely our current nightly toll today is. It’s almost a 9-11 a day.
The second thing is to make the experts, “wrong”. Sure the President himself says nice things about Dr. Fauci, but his minions, from his son to the talking heads on Fox News, all are attacking him. And that’s not close to what the “Internet” is doing. Video after video of obscure “experts” saying that Fauci has got it all wrong appears. They question his science, his career, and his motivation (they say he’s in league with that arch-villain, Bill Gates).
So, to paraphrase the words of Donald Trump, don’t believe what you hear or read, believe what I say.
The President can’t focus on death or fighting the virus. It’s not that he doesn’t know; he can’t have HIS America in mourning. If it is, then his chances for re-election are non-existent.
Change the Subject
Another word that goes along with obfuscation is distraction (though with nowhere near the value, maybe only worth two dollars). Lets talk about “Obamagate” whatever the Hell that is. Let’s makeup an entire conspiracy, led by the now openly critical former President and the 2020 Democratic candidate, Mr. Biden. Let’s accuse them of treason, even though there is no legal way to commit that crime outside of war. And if that doesn’t distract you enough, then add in the Attorney General using his power to “pardon” Trump’s allies from their crimes and sentences. Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone: Trump won’t have to take the “heat” for actually pardoning them. Bill Barr will abuse his authority as America’s chief law enforcement officer to take care of that light work.
It’s all to distract, to throw into shadow. Perhaps the Trump campaign thinks we will miss what’s really happening in America. At least that what they hope: that their obfuscation will be sufficient to cloud our vision, and get him re-elected.
Maybe the eighth grade boys are right. Maybe obfuscation is a dirty word.
