Through Kristi Noem’s Looking-Glass

My parents had the Modern Library anthology of the writings of Lewis Carroll, so it was almost inevitable that this would be my first choice for “serious reading.” One of the most interesting sources I encountered was Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland. Most memorable is Alice’s encounter with Humpty Dumpty (before his inevitable fall), which turned out to be my first encounter with an argument over semantics.

The keystone of this dialog comes with the following exchange:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘“it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.” 

In the reality of the present day, Humpty Dumpty has become Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has appointed herself master of the semantics of “domestic terrorism.”

Screen shot of the protest in Minneapolis over the shooting of Renee Nicole Good (from the Web page for the Al Jazeera article)

This morning I read an Al Jazeera article originally written for PolitiFact by Maria Ramirez Uribe and Amy Sherman entitled “US woman killed by ICE agent called ‘domestic terrorist’: What it means.” The “spoiler alert” is that the meaning of “domestic terrorism” is basically what Noem chose it to mean. That choice was that the killing of Renee Nicole Good at a rally in Minneapolis was because, according to Noem, she “refused to obey orders to get out of her car, ‘weaponise[d] her vehicle’ and ‘attempted to run’ over an officer.” However, according to Uribe and Sherman: “Minnesota officials disputed Noem’s account, citing videos showing Good trying to drive away.”

So “which is to be master,” the Homeland Security Secretary, who was not “on site” for this event, or the sources Uribe and Sherman drew upon to write their article? To be fair, those authors made it clear that there is no hard-and-fast definition of “domestic terrorism,” which pretty much gives the Secretary the liberty of defining the term. It should therefore be no surprise that she would exercise that liberty to the advantage of her “primary authority,” meaning, of course, the President of the United States. “For the record,” the Al Jazeera article never cites anything involving the President’s role in this affair other than the sub-headline “The Trump administration has broadened the ‘domestic terrorism’ label.”

The fact is that, in trying to account for what happened in Minneapolis, Uribe and Sherman could not avoid getting bogged down in a morass on ambiguities; and, when there are so many ambiguities, anyone can come away from this report believing whatever suits their preferences!