There is an old Mark Twain saying \u2013 never use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent one will do. I am a believer in that. As an old educator, I\u2019ve sat through far too many conferences when the teachers all used university class \u201ceducation-ese\u201d to parents and students who, through no fault of their own, just didn\u2019t get it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there is one five-dollar word I love because it\u2019s so descriptive. It\u2019s the title of this essay: OBFUSCATION!! When I used it in an eighth grade class, all of the boys tittered \u2013 thinking it was one of \u201cthose\u201d words, just because it ends in \u201cion\u201d. But it isn\u2019t. Webster defines it as: \u201cto make obscure, throw into shadow\u201d. Today\u2019s essay has a lesson, and it\u2019s not the definition of obfuscation (there will be no quiz at the end). It\u2019s about the use of obfuscation as a political tactic and strategy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is clear what the crisis in America is today, and it\u2019s not a lack of spelling words.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m afraid we are becoming comfortable with 2000 people a day dying from the COVID-19 virus.\u00a0\u00a0The death toll appears nightly on the television screen, much as the \u201cbutcher\u2019s bill\u201d of Vietnam appeared in my childhood.\u00a0\u00a0Each night, we see more and more Americans succumbing to the illness.\u00a0\u00a0We hear of those we know, and some we loved, lost to the pandemic.\u00a0\u00a0But it seems to have stopped having the impact it had in those first few weeks, as if the today\u2019s dead aren\u2019t quite as important as those early victims.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s important to get America\u2019s mind off of death. We may all want to \u201copen up\u201d 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\u2019t willing to risk death to do it. So he has determined to make those deaths \u201cobscure, thrown into the shadow\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
How can he possibly do that? What could he possibly say to distract us from death?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 (\u201cthey\u2019ll pay more if it\u2019s Corona-Virus\u201d states one). And they\u2019ll try to make the death toll statistically insignificant, as if the tiny fraction of Americans dying isn\u2019t 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\u2019s almost a 9-11 a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second thing is to make the experts, \u201cwrong\u201d. 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\u2019s not close to what the \u201cInternet\u201d is doing. Video after video of obscure \u201cexperts\u201d saying that Fauci has got it all wrong appears. They question his science, his career, and his motivation (they say he\u2019s in league with that arch-villain, Bill Gates). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, to paraphrase the words of Donald Trump, don\u2019t believe what you hear or read, believe what I say. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The President can\u2019t focus on death or fighting the virus. It\u2019s not that he doesn\u2019t know; he can\u2019t have HIS America in mourning. If it is, then his chances for re-election are non-existent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another word that goes along with obfuscation is distraction (though with nowhere near the value, maybe only worth two dollars). Lets talk about \u201cObamagate\u201d whatever the Hell that is. Let\u2019s makeup an entire conspiracy, led by the now openly critical former President and the 2020 Democratic candidate, Mr. Biden. Let\u2019s accuse them of treason, even though there is no legal way to commit that crime outside of war. And if that doesn\u2019t distract you enough, then add in the Attorney General using his power to \u201cpardon\u201d Trump\u2019s allies from their crimes and sentences. Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone: Trump won\u2019t have to take the \u201cheat\u201d for actually pardoning them. Bill Barr will abuse his authority as America\u2019s chief law enforcement officer to take care of that light work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s all to distract, to throw into shadow. Perhaps the Trump campaign thinks we will miss what\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe the eighth grade boys are right. Maybe obfuscation is a dirty word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"