Attorney General Sessions, the Russians, and the Meaning of Words.

In case you haven't heard, the Washington Post broke the news yesterday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, at least twice during Trump's successful presidential campaign. This is a problem because of what Sessions said, under oath, during his confirmation hearings.

During those hearings, Sen. Al Franken asked Session how he would respond were he to learn that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign had communications with Russian officials. Sessions responded by insisting that he had no knowledge of any such communications, and then added the following remark: "I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians."

The Washington Post reports the following response from the Sessions-camp:

Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in detail what he discussed with Kislyak.  

"There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer," said Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’s spokeswoman.

The idea seems to be this: Although Sessions said the words, "I did not have communications with the Russians," what he meant by those words was not inconsistent with the fact that he actually did meet with the Russian Ambassador twice, once in private. Although meeting with the Russian ambassador seems to qualify as "communications with the Russians," the claim is that something in the context in which those words were spoken alters their intended meaning.

So let's talk a bit about something that, in critical thinking texts, is dubbed "conversational implication." Sometimes we speak loosely on the assumption that people will understand what we mean based on the broader context within which we are speaking. If the context makes it obvious that I meant something that I didn't say explicitly, then it is "conversationally implied." This means that I can be dishonest without saying anything that is strictly-speaking false, and it means I can be honest even though my words, pulled out of context, are not exactly true as stated.

Suppose, for example, that someone rushes into my office and shouts, "I need a fire extinguisher! Do you know where I can find a fire extinguisher?" Now imagine that I answer, "Go to the stairwell at the end of the hall. If you go down two flights, you'll find one at the base of the stairs." The context here implies that the fire extinguisher I'm directing the desperate person to is the NEAREST fire extinguisher (or at least the nearest one that I know of). If I happen to have a fire extinguisher under my desk, there is reason to accuse me of being misleading even if the words I said were strictly true.

Likewise, a statement might be strictly false because it isn't properly qualified--but the needed qualifications are conversationally implicit, and so we can't accuse the person of dishonesty. If I say, "I didn't drive anywhere near the bank" in order to explain to my wife why I failed to deposit the checks, the fact that I have driven near the bank on countless occasions over the last few years doesn't make me dishonest. The qualifier, "today," is conversationally implied: "I didn't drive anywhere near the bank today." And the fact that I was driving in the same town as my bank, and that by global standards that is darned near to the bank, doesn't make me dishonest either. After all, the context makes it clear that I am using the term "near" in a relative sense--in the sense in which it would be convenient for me to pull in and deposit the checks.

It sounds to me like this is the move that Sessions and his surrogates want to make: Although what he said wasn't strictly true, it was conversationally implied that he was only referring to communications about Trump's campaign.

But this doesn't seem right. I've read the full question that Franken asked, which elicited Sessions' reply (you can find here). There is something that clearly is conversationally implied by the context of Sessions' words, namely that he did not have communications with the Russians during the time of the campaign. Given how long Sessions has been in the Senate, it would be hard to believe the remark if we didn't assume some kind of time constraint like that. But given the focus of Franken's question, and given Sessions' explicit reference to the campaign, the time constraint was conversationally implied. So on that front, we can't accuse Sessions of dishonesty even if we can prove that he has met with Russian officials dozens of times over the years.

Also, the context seems to imply something more substantive that casual communication of the sort one might have at a black tie affair. If Sessions had run into the Russian ambassador at the cocktail bar, and the two had exchanged pleasantries about the weather, that would be a kind of communication with a Russian official. But I think the conversational context makes it clear that something more substantive is at issue.

The problem, of course, is that Sessions met with a Russian official during the campaign, and that at least one of these meetings was a private meeting, not a casual exchange about the weather. And yet what he said was this: "I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians." Given the context offered by Franken's question, I doubt that anyone in the room assumed that this meant, "Although I have had communications with the Russians during the campaign, in fact meeting more than once with the Russian ambassador, we didn't talk about the campaign."

"I did not have communications with the Russians," in ordinary English, tends to carry the implication that one, well, didn't have communications with the Russians--unless there is something clearly indicated by the conversational context that implies otherwise. And there just doesn't seem to be any such something in place here.

Could Sessions have misspoken under the stress of a confirmation hearing? Sure. He could have intended to say, "I did not have any communications with the Russians about the campaign." But if he had spoken correctly, you can bet Franken would have asked some follow-up questions: "Did you, then, communicate with Russian officials during the campaign in some other capacity?" That he didn't ask such follow-up questions is a pretty good sign to me that Franken didn't interpret Sessions' words to be qualified in that way.

In fact, such follow up questions wouldn't make sense given what Sessions in fact said. It is thus a strain of the concept of conversational implication to assume that "about the campaign" was conversationally implied, even though the person Sessions was directly answering clearly failed to catch the implication. I doubt anyone else caught it either. Why would they?

As such, the claim by Sessions' spokesperson, Flores, that there was "nothing misleading" about his statement only succeeds in calling Flores' credibility into question. It was clearly misleading--misleading enough that a natural line of follow-up questions, which Franken would surely have asked had the statement been properly qualified, was not pursued. And we'll never know what that line of questioning might have produced.

None of this means Sessions committed perjury. To establish perjury, one would need to show not only that his words were strictly false but that he intended to mislead. But even if he did not intend to mislead, the words were misleading.

Is it a big deal? We inadvertently say misleading things all the time, because we aren't being careful. Sometimes we assume, wrongly, that something is conversationally implied when it isn't. Misspeaking isn't necessarily a big deal, although it can be pretty serious depending on what it leads people to believe and do. And I think it is important to acknowledge when one's words are misleading, and to take responsibility for the consequences when they are less than trivial.

Responding to Trump's Administrations: Scapegoats and Meaningful Resistance

Yesterday I was reading about René Girard and his understanding of how societies use the scapegoating mechanism as a kind of pressure valve to channel the violent energies caused by rising conflict: people collectively identify a sacrificial scapegoat towards whom they channel all that violent energy. They "sacrifice" the scapegoat to "the gods" and achieve a kind of catharsis that brings in its wake a temporary peace.

As I was reading, I was (naturally) thinking about the current administration. That administration, as I see it, has invoked a particular form of this scapegoating mechanism as part of an effort to win the support of disaffected, white, working-class Americans. I say a "particular form," because what the administration has done is invoked divisive us/them ideology that divides the world between an in-group and an out-group, and it is this out-group that becomes the scapegoat. Not an individual, but an entire class of human beings. "These others," they say, "are the source of our troubles, and when these others are removed or marginalized our problems will be solved."

This ideological othering is the most dangerous kind of scapegoating. It sets community against community, achieving the temporary peace within a community by putting itself at war (figuratively or literally) with another community. When the targeted others are already represented in a diverse community, then the war first begins internally, requiring a kind of purge. The potential for widespread and enduring horror is quite significant if the leadership of a nation is allowed to carry out a vision defined by such scapegoating of the ideological other.

So when there is a danger of this happening, or when it is already underway, resistance is essential. (I am convinced a resistance movement must be thoroughly nonviolent, for reasons I won't explore here.) But yesterday, as I was reading about Girardian scapegoating, I began to worry that some voices in the burgeoning resistance in the US were turning Trump into a scapegoat, trying to heap on him the weight of all that is wrong in American society so that his removal from office could become the sacrificial ritual that would, in the Girardian scapegoat mythology, make everything right again.

Thinking about this, I wrote up a quick little parable or drama, meaning to warn against this possibility. Then I posted it here.

Feedback from friends on social media as well as on this blog have led me to conclude that the parable was at best ripe for being misunderstood and at worst a dangerously misleading vision. More precisely, I worry that my little parable suggested a false equivalency between two very different things: on the one hand, the kind of threat posed by a presidential administration that lifts up and legitimizes ideological hate in the course of implementing policies that scapegoat whole classes of people; on the other hand, the kind of threat posed if those who resist that administration's efforts were to fall prey in significant numbers to the scapegoating instinct.

These two things are not equivalent.

What I want to say now is this. I think there is enormous danger when the reins of power fall into the hands of those who openly preach ideological division and encourage scapegoating of whole classes of people. Those who see this happening have an obligation to speak out about the threat, to repudiate the othering, and to stand (nonviolently) against the policies and policy proposals that would implement such scapegoating of entire groups. There needs to be a meaningful resistance.

I suspect that the sort of approach that Michael Moore lays out in his "10-Point Plan to Stop Trump" would (if a large enough number of people get on board) prove quite effective in neutralizing Trump's ability to enact his ideological agenda, if not pushing him out of office. But while an action plan is crucial to any organized nonviolent campaign, the spirit in which that campaign is waged is just as important, especially for long-term success.

Most importantly, a resistance movement must avoid becoming the thing it stands against. This means, first and foremost, that it must avoid ideological othering. But just as importantly, it must also avoid the milder scapegoating that treats Trump as the problem and his removal as the solution that will restore peace and prosperity to America.

If a nonviolent resistance movement against Trump's agenda falls prey to the scapegoating instinct, that is not in any way equivalent to an administration that is trying to implement us/them ideology on a global scale. Not even close. Our world will be safer if that administration fails to implement its ideology or, better yet, stops trying either because it has been rendered toothless by our checks-and-balances (supported by a strong grass-roots movement) or has been removed through impeachment or resignation. But my worry is this: a resistance that falls prey to mythic scapegoat-thinking will, if successful in removing Trump's administration, quickly move from the elation of success to the comforting sense that all is now well, as if the problem were solved.

Furthermore, if a successful campaign is defined by the scapegoating of Trump, this may actually fuel the us/them ideology in this country, worsening the divisions and the polarized animosity. Because here's the thing: Trump is the hero of a lot of people. He symbolically represents them. If it's just about ousting Trump--and his ardent supporters are seen as nothing but a bunch of idiots that deserve to be shoved back under the rocks they crawled out from--then the danger posed by Trump's brand of ideological leadership will be alleviated only at the cost of intensifying the divisions that put him into power in the first place. The next Trump who comes along can awaken the same forces, and they may be angrier than ever.

I have been in the habit of expressing these concerns by saying that Trump is just a symptom of a far deeper problem--a problem of ideological divisiveness that needs to be separated from the people who preach it and repudiated in much the way the Martin Luther King, Jr., repudiated racial oppression by insisting that racism, not racists, were the enemy.

But a commenter on this blog, raverroes, has pointed out to me that this is the wrong way to characterize Trump. Rather than being a symptom, he is a catalyst.

This strikes me as exactly. When he was campaigning, Trump's shameless indulgence in pugnacious rhetoric encouraged others who harbored divisive ideologies to step out of the shadow of shame that kept them from expressing their hate boldly. The social constraints against openly abusing Muslims and other minorities in public were, in Trump's rhetoric, lumped together with "political correctness" and dismissed along with its excesses. And when Trump was elected, that event carried a symbolic meaning for at least some of those among Trump's base who were most in the grip of ideologies of hate: The social forces that repudiate acting on our hateful feelings have been defeated. We are free to hate out loud.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying that every Trump voter took home that message. A substantial percentage of Trump voters were never inspired by his divisive rhetoric and blatant us/them ideologies in the first place. They voted for him in spite of those things, perhaps not seeing them as the existential threat to our values and social life that I take them to be. I know people--who are surely representative of many more--who held their noses as they voted for Trump, finding him odious but thinking that his excesses would be restrained by the establishment and that his administration would make SCOTUS appointments that would favor a pro-life agenda. Others thought his promise of good jobs, of looking out for the working class, eclipsed his talk about Muslim bans and registries (which, they thought, was just talk and wouldn't be something he could implement anyway, it being unconstitutional and all).

But even if most Trump voters were not inspired by Trump's promulgation of ideologies of division, those in our society who did embrace such ideologies flocked to him and were emboldened by him. He became a catalyst. And that catalyst is now occupying the most powerful political office on planet Earth.

This, then, raises the question of what to do in response. The root problem is not any one person but an underlying pattern of thinking and acting. The root problem is divisive ideology and the illusory promise of tribal unity offered by sacrificing scapegoats. There are deep social structures and unconscious cultural forces that feed such ideology, that perpetuate such false promises. We need to work against these forces in a way that doesn't lead us to become seduced by their lure. But we also confront the reality that a catalyst for these forces now occupies the Oval Office. I'm not sure his aim is to be such a catalyst.  I suspect it is more about ego-gratification. But he remains a catalyst.

I remain convinced that we compromise any meaningful resistance to divisive ideology and its harmful effects if we turn a catalyst into a scapegoat. But raverroes has highlighted for me the crucial difference between symptoms and catalysts, and so I also think we compromise any meaningful resistance if we treat someone who has functioned as a catalyst as nothing but a symptom.

There is one final conditioning force that I believe any meaningful resistance needs to internalize. I think we lose the moral center that must define a nonviolent movement if we see only the catalyst and forget that the catalyst is first and foremost a person--a human person who has been thrown into a position he never expected to be in and who is plagued by his own demons. A person gripped by an irrepressible urge for approval while sitting in a role that by its nature draws relentless critical scrutiny. A person who is surely angry and miserable, whose spirit is layered with crud and who is desperately trying to get rid of the crud by rubbing it off on those around him. Where there is a human soul there is the need for the kind of compassion that reaches across the divides of human conflict and affirms our shared human condition even as we stand firm against the choices and behaviors that we are convinced are wrong and harmful.

The question is how to cultivate the right spirit and weave that spirit into an action plan that stands up for the vulnerable, that says no to ideological hate and scapegoating, that impedes the advance of injustice--and that can do so without falling into the scapegoating instinct even when such a potent catalyst for ideological division occupies the most visible and powerful office in the world.

I don't have clear answers, but I think we need to ask the questions.

Our Choice: A Parable for Our Times

Here's the situation.

Your current maid is retiring. He kept the house basically presentable but never did the windows. The windows are, predictably, filthy.

You advertise for a new maid and two candidates apply. The first shows up at the interview nicely dressed but seems to you to have a grating personality. She is businesslike but humorless. One of her former employers suspects that she was in the habit of sneaking swigs of booze from their liquor cabinet, but others point out that she brought her own high-powered vacuum and knew how to make a kitchen floor shine. She doesn't do windows.

The other candidate, with no background in cleaning houses, shows up to the interview wearing an orange clown wig, with a sledge hammer in one hand and a jug of gasoline in the other. He cackles throughout the interview, making remarks about the size of his penis and how hot he thinks his own daughter is. He keeps telling you how dangerous your neighbors are. When you ask if he does windows, he hefts the sledge hammer and says that if you hire him you'll never need to clean your windows again.

Assuming you have to hire one of them, who do you hire?

Oh, and the person you hire will have access to the contents of your gun safe.