Semantics

A lot of freaking out over AG Barr's casual statement that there was spying on the Trump campaign, and the only question is whether it was the legitimate or illegitimate sort.  As RealClearInvestigations notes:
So there we have it with all the decisive logic of a Socratic dialogue: The FBI could not possibly have spied on the Trump campaign because bureau lingo includes neither the noun “spy” nor the verb “to spy.” Whatever informants may have been employed, whatever tools of surveillance may have been utilized, the FBI did not spy on the Trump campaign – didn’t spy by definition, as the bureau doesn’t use the term (except, of course, to describe the very same activities when undertaken by foreigners).

6 comments:

Grim said...

"Propaganda" is like that. In official military doctrine, it is defined as "enemy action to...."

So, by definition, the USA does not engage in propaganda.

Christopher B said...

Surveillance is surveillance. The question is, as Barr noted, wether or not it was authorized.

And that's not, as Comey claimed, 'court-ordered'.

They know darn well what Barr means, and I think they realize they are losing control of the narrative.

Texan99 said...

Yes, I enjoyed the argument that evidence to support a FISA warrant by definition is not suspect if the warrant is granted, even if it was a lie and you knew it and concealed it from the court, because the court order washes it clean by definition. Treason never prospers, for if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

And yet there's not a lawyer in the country who doesn't understand what's supposed to happen to you if you get caught redhanded lying to a court.

E Hines said...

Comey demonstrates his fundamental dishonesty with his cynical quibbling over the term "spying," just as the NLMSM and Progressive-Democrats do over Trump's use of the term "treason."

Alternatively, Comey insults our intelligence by assuming us unwashed and unnuanced are stupid enough to buy into his nattering.

Or maybe both.

Eric Hines

Assistant Village Idiot said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9qj0ekHdNk

South Park: It's not fascism, because we don;t call it that.

E Hines said...

This is also why we cannot surrender the lexicon to the Left.

Eric Hines