This is not about Trump. Not directly, anyway.<\/p>\n
I’ve been thinking about these two words — corruption and lies — because they’re beginning to seem omnipresent in our conversations. But what do they actually mean?<\/p>\n
That’s an honest question. Taking corruption first, I’d always thought that within its meaning was a dishonorable exchange of funds, i.e., buying someone’s support. Recently, though, I’ve seen the word flung out by Trumpites against Democrats without a factual identification of the alleged corruption.<\/p>\n
When I was a kid, reading probably above my pay grade, I’d often find my mom to ask the meaning of a word I didn’t know. “Look it up in the dictionary,” she’d say. And so I would. At the time it annoyed me somewhat. Why couldn’t she simply tell me the meaning? But I got used to looking things up in the dictionary.<\/p>\n
So, let’s look up “corruption.”<\/p>\n
Not really helpful: “1<\/strong> dishonest or illegal behaviour (it’s a British dictionary); 2<\/strong> the action of corrupting someone or something.”<\/p>\n But I find confirmation of my interpretation under “corrupt:” “1<\/strong> willing to act dishonestly in return for money or person gain; 2<\/strong> evil or very immoral.” Well, not number two — which seems to be the way the crazies are using it.<\/p>\n However, corruption is an illegal act, so I go to my Black’s Law Dictionary:<\/p>\n 1. Depravity, perversion, or taint; an impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle; esp. the impairment of a public official’s duties by bribery. 2. The act of doing something with an intent to give some advantage inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others; a fiduciary’s or official’s use of a station or office to procure some benefit, either personally or for someone else, contrary to the rights of others.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n OK, so the current use of “corruption” by crazies fits neatly into their wacko conspiracy belief that Trump is about to expose a Democratic cabal of Satanic child sex traffickers.<\/p>\n But 2. fits my understanding. And more than that, look at the last definition, the one I highlighted, because is it not the perfect description of what the current and corrupt Postmaster General is doing to the USPS?<\/p>\n As to the word “lie,” my concern is the demand critics of journalism — some of whom are journalists themselves, but overtly attached to a specific political point of view — have been making about important newspaper coverage of Trump and his handlers. (I started to call them “minions” until I realized Trump is the minion.)<\/p>\n Every couple of days I read someone insisting that the Times, for one, stop using words like “misinformation,” “falsehood,” “without factual evidence,” and the like.<\/p>\n Call it what it is! they insist: A LIE. And yes, it may well be a lie. But the word “lie” has a specific modifier: “A deliberately<\/em> false statement.” And that adverb “deliberately” removes the word “lie” from a responsible newspaper reporter’s working vocabulary. Because it would mean a reporter must prove the conscious nature of someone’s lying statement every time he quotes the liar and labels it a lie.<\/p>\n Sure, you know Trump lies, I know it and anyone who’s had to listen to him over the past several years knows it: he’s a liar, an incessant liar. He’s also an ignoramus, stupid, mentally disintegrated and a whole heap of other awful characteristics, including thoroughly corrupt, no matter what definition you use. But PolitiFact<\/a>, the terrific fact-checking service with the colorful and witty graphic Truth-o-Meter, does not call what Trump says a “lie.”<\/p>\n At the top of the PolitiFact page today is a Trump quote from a few days ago: “Our (COVID-19) numbers are better than almost all countries.” To you and me, this is a lie. But to PolitiFact’s Truth-o-Meter, this is called “False.” (The Truth-o-Meter runs from “True” — with a green light — to the extreme “Pants on Fire,” with a fierce blaze burning over the red light.)<\/p>\n To say Trump lied here, journalists and watchdogs would have to investigate whether Trump knew<\/em> he was lying, or whether he believed what he said.<\/p>\n In the end — which is coming but I wish it were moving faster — it doesn’t matter whether the Times labels Trump a liar. To call his statements “false” is enough. We who read the Times can do the rest.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is not about Trump. Not directly, anyway. I’ve been thinking about these two words — corruption and lies — because they’re beginning to seem omnipresent in our conversations. But what do they actually mean? That’s an honest question. Taking … Continue reading