Clausectomy

Josh Marshall, among many others, noted the tendentious editing perpetrated a month ago by the Don’s personal attorney general in ever so briefly summarizing the Mueller report, which was finally released today, sort of (lots of missing stuff).

What William Barr chose to quote: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Robert Mueller’s full sentence: “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Leaving aside the fact that the campaign had numerous contacts with the Russian government, as documented in the Mueller report (in fact, as noted in sentence immediately preceding the one cited above!); and forgetting for the moment that “did not establish” does not mean “was not the case” (what were the Trumpists doing with the Russians, exchanging recipes?): anyone who pays attention to American public life will not be particularly surprised by this smarmy editorial decision. A certain sector of the political spectrum has a thing about introductory clauses in nuanced sentences: they hate them. No, that’s not right. They ignore them. In their view, not only do they have no force, these words simply do not exist.

I give you the poster child for grammatical butchery that is now all too broadly accepted (universally accepted in some quarters): “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The vaunted Second Amendment. Or rather, part of it. The complete sentence is sophisticated, unsuited to our crude times, the first thirteen words of which can be skipped over ad libitum: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …” Who needs ’em? (The words or the militias.*)

The phrase “well regulated” is particularly germane, and most emphatically ignored by the gun nuts. Regulations that circumscribe the possession and use of armaments—imagine that!

N.B. A quick search determined that Frank Balsinger at Scholars & Rogues coined the word “clausectomy” in 2015. The clause in question comes at the end of Article VI, paragraph 3 of the Constitution, but the idea is the same: if you don’t like it, ignore it.

__________
*The “militias” in the Second Amendment have evolved into the “National Guard”—“a reserve military force,” says Wikipedia, “composed of National Guard military members or units of each state and the territories of Guam, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, for a total of 54 separate organizations. All members of the National Guard of the United States are also members of the militia of the United States as defined by 10 U.S.C. § 246. National Guard units are under the dual control of the state and the federal government.” On the other hand, the “militias” of popular imagination are the whack-jobs holed up in the forests and forlorn regions of the continental U.S. See, for instance, this. The lede: “Before the F.B.I. arrested Larry Hopkins, the leader of the right-wing militia that detained migrant families in the New Mexico desert, he’d had so many run-ins with the law that his police record stretched across much of the United States.” God bless America.