Yesterday’s Louisville Courier Journal had a story about Ky Governor Matt Bevin defending Trump calling the impeachment inquiry a lynching. When he was asked about use of that word, Bevin first said it wasn’t worth discussing, but defended the President’s use of the word and denounced Trump’s critics as being to ones who were trivializing the term.
Matt Bevin — “Is there a lot of very specific and dark history associated with lynching? Of course there is. But to assume that that is now forevermore the only thing that that word, which actually has true meaning in the English language, can ever be associated with and that it could never be used in any other context is a torturing of the language that frankly at the end of the day doesn’t serve anyone well.”
Let’s review. According to Bevin, it’s fine to use the word lynching to mean questions asked in a legal proceeding that can’t be answered truthfully without self incrimination, but it’s trivializing the term lynching to reserve it only to mean murder by a mob.
My first thought for where to go with this diary was to parse Bevin’s use of the word trivializing. It seemed to me that Bevin was the one trivializing the word lynching by giving it a looser meaning.
I was also intrigued by his assertion that lynching had a true meaning in the English language broader than murder by mob action. I was already in the library when I saw the Courier Journal article, so I decided to see what broader meaning the word lynching might have. Here’s the full definition of lynching listed in Webster’s New World College Dictionary — Lynch — To murder (an accused person) by mob action and without lawful trial, especially by hanging. No secondary or broader definition of any kind was given.
My own dictionary at home, The American College College Dictionary, published in 1967, was equally specific. Lynch — To put (a person) to death (by hanging, burning or otherwise) by some concerted action without authority or process of law, for some offense, known or imputed.
Kind of a stretch to broaden either of those definitions to include legal, but uncomfortable questioning.
Then I looked in one more dictionary. I have a copy of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1859. That’s a scan if its title page in my header. Its definition of lynch wasn’t quite the same. Lynch — to inflict pain, or punish, without the forms of law, as by a mob, or by unauthorized persons. The term was derived from a Virginia farmer named William Lynch, who took the law into his own hands.
So in 1859, when black people were considered valuable property by white people rather than former valuable property, lost without compensation, actual murder by mob wasn’t commonplace enough for the word lynch to have earned the sole definition of murder by mob it has today. That must have been the broader definition Matt Bevin was referring to. Bevin knows that Donald Trump has refused to authorize anyone to honor any request to appear before Congress. When they appear anyway and tell the truth, it pains Donald Trump to hear it. There you have it. Pain inflicted by unauthorized persons, the 1859 dictionary definition of lynch.
Back to trivializing. Bevin must have also been using the secondary definition of trivial given in the 1859 dictionary — Trivial name — in natural history the name for the species, which added to the generic name forms the complete denomination of the species; the specific name.
So when Bevin said Trump’s critics were trivializing the word lynching, he meant they were giving the word specific meaning, something he refused to do.
We’ve been too easy on Republicans by accusing them of wanting to turn back the clock to before the time of FDR. They want to turn back the clock to before the time of Lincoln. (I used these two sentences in a comment reply and it was then suggested by stratocruiser that they would make a good ending to this diary)