The presidents of Harvard, M.I.T., and the University of Pennsylvania did America a favor on Dec. 5 when they told Congress that calls for the genocide of the Jews could only be considered harassment or bullying based on their “context.”
Whether you consider their response a heartless apology for hatred or a semi-defense of free speech, it was not – as they claimed in the storm that followed – the result of imprecise language or bad advice.
Instead, they spotlighted the most consequential concept in the English language. Context is not just a word, but a weapon brandished by leaders in academia, government, media, and business to justify any action, to advance any idea. It is the linguistic hinge that allows them to present all their always contentious and often incoherent ideas as common sense. You just have to understand the context, friend.
Context is a mighty tool because it empowers authorities to choose the information they deem necessary to understand other phenomena. Nothing just is; everything must be interpreted through reference to other facts selected by the powers that be. Given the right context, every claim is possible: Boys are girls and girls are boys; climate change is an “existential” threat; the American economy is going gangbusters and white supremacists and Christian nationalists are plotting a war against the Republic. Those who define the context can shape reality.
Context empowers universities to cherry-pick America’s history of racism to punish “microaggressions,” “implicit bias,” and other forms of speech it does not like while maintaining calls for a second Holocaust are only a problem if you choose to see them that way.
Context empowers mainstream media outlets to cast Donald Trump as a kleptocratic dictator and President Biden as a paragon of public service. It is that powerful.
Context empowers the government to claim a rise of “misinformation” and “disinformation” and requires it to partner with social media platforms and other private concerns to limit First Amendment rights.
Context empowers U.S. corporations to do business with China and other repressive regimes around the world while condemning America’s justice system.
Context empowers climate change warriors to defend their travel in carbon-gushing private planes before returning home to one of their mansions.
Context is, of course, central to human understanding. Facts alone have no meaning. They only become useful when we connect them with other pieces of information to identify significant patterns that can guide our behavior.
Tragically, this necessary connecting of dots has been widely corrupted in recent decades by authorities to legitimize and impose their desires on the rest of us.
Their action would not be so destructive if they were acting in good faith. They are not.
At its core, American democracy depends on equality – the bedrock principle that everyone will be treated the same. Essentially, it is a secular restatement of the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
This idea of justice, that everyone gets the same fair shake, is what binds us together as a people. It promises that the rules of the game aren’t stacked against anybody. Our nation’s history can be read as the movement toward this ideal.
The weaponization of context moves us in the opposite direction. It replaces the universal principle of equality with a strategy of situational ethics that allows authority figures to support anything that serves their aim.
It is especially devious because even as its proponents embrace postmodern amorality – the belief that there are no eternal truths, just new and changing understandings rooted in the needs of the moment – they cynically invoke the timeless concept of morality to justify their actions. They incessantly proclaim their fidelity to the eternal verities while shape-shifting them at every turn.
Morality can evolve, but it is not situational. It holds great purchase because it is understood as righteous wisdom that applies to all people at all times. It includes the self-evident truths that the Founders referred to in the Declaration of Independence.
Context, however, is now deployed by various authorities to create the moral universe on the fly, configuring and reconfiguring it to suit their purposes.
It is tempting to brand these bad actors as hypocrites. But that gives them too much credit. They are wholly consistent in their beliefs. They do not proclaim their fidelity to democracy, morality, and free speech because they embrace those concepts. Instead, they see them as effective tools for fooling the public into believing they share traditional values.
Although progressives, who largely shape our politics and culture, have done the most to advance contextual claptrap, the problem runs much deeper.
Ironically, nobody more nakedly reflects this approach to life better than their great Satan, Donald Trump. He is the practitioner of situational ethics and transactional politics, par excellence. Nobody knows what he stands for – except for himself and his immediate needs.
Like his opponents, he is not necessarily immoral; he just does not possess a firm moral compass. He is not necessarily unprincipled; he just does not hold to an unwavering set of principles. Unlike his opponents, however, Trump doesn’t pretend to be something he is not.
The weaponization of context helps explain why our leaders are insistently asking us to believe their words rather than our own eyes. Instead of promoting compromise by describing things as they are and searching for common ground, they corrupt language and ideas, facts and history, to impose their will in the pursuit of power, status, and wealth.
The three university presidents provided an unintended public service by shining a light on this danger. They showed us what we are up against. The ongoing pushback against that troika must be the start of a sustained movement that demands honesty rather than expediency. Our best hope is that the old adage that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time is really true.
J. Peder Zane is an editor for RealClearInvestigations and a columnist for RealClearPolitics.
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