“It’s as though the simplicity of self plus action equals consequence is a math problem they cannot solve, a sequence they cannot face; language, loose language, vague language, becomes an out. Things happen.
In the wildlife sanctuaries of literature, we study the science of speech, the flight patterns of individual words, the herd behaviour of words together, and we learn what language does and why it matters. This is excellent training for going out into the world and looking at all the unhallowed speech of political statements and news headlines and CDC instructions and seeing how it makes the world or, in this case, makes a mess of it. It is the truest, highest purpose of language to make things clear and help us see; when words are used to do the opposite you know you’re in trouble and maybe that there’s a cover-up.
Detective work and the habits of perception it generates can save us from believing lies and sometimes show us who’s being protected when a lie is also an alibi. The CDC is right to warn about the dangers of misusing alcohol, if not in how it did so. For my part, I am trying to warn about the misuses of language. We are all language detectives, and if we pay enough attention we can figure out what statements mean even when those don’t mean to tell us, and we can even tell when stories are lying to us. So many of them do.”
p. 315-319
Solnit, R. (2017). The case of the missing perpetrator. Essay in The mother of all questions (pp. 278-319). Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
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