Everyone’s talking about the Trump-Russia scandal wrong, including you

So now we know: The Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the hacking campaign against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, undermined our democracy, and the collusion and quid-pro-quo with Vladimir Putin appears to be ongoing — possibly because Russian Intelligence has kompromat on Trump.
Why aren’t more people freaking out?
There are a lot of reasons, including negative partisanship and a normal lag time before big stories penetrate the public consciousness, but part of the problem is also that the language we’re using to describe the scandal is way too complicated. As currently presented, the average person either literally can’t understand the scandal or won’t have a primal emotional response to it if they do. Let’s go word by word to phrase this scandal in a way that people can understand:
COLLUSION: This is a college-level vocabulary word that most people had never heard before the Trump-Russia scandal and almost certainly had never used. That means even if someone knows what the word means, it won’t make that person feel anything. Better to use “collaborate” — which is a middle school level vocabulary word — or better yet “worked together with.”
RUSSIA/RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE: Talking about what “Russia” did runs the risk of implicating average Russians who had nothing to do with anything and could also sound discriminatory. “Russian intelligence” is more specific, but “intelligence” sounds kind of murky and vague. Better to say it plain: The president’s campaign worked with “Russian spies” or “a Russian spy operation.”
HACKING: The word “hacking” carries no real meaning to most people outside the world of cyber-security because it’s a new category of crime using new technology which literally didn’t exist when the majority of Americans were kids learning right from wrong. But hacking is just a new version of something really old, something visceral that we all know is bad: “breaking and entering” and “theft.”
THE DEMOCRATS/HILLARY CLINTON: As soon as these words are used, people’s partisan identities kick in and rationality goes out the window. Either leave these words out or say that the Russian spies Trump worked with broke into the offices of “both parties” and stole internal documents — they just didn’t release the Republicans’ info because Trump was working with them. We also know that the Russian spies broke into voting machines in 39 states.
UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY: “Democracy” sounds like a high school civics lesson and “undermining” sounds like a scold from your mom. But democracy is an integral part of living in a free society as Americans. The goal of the Russian spies who Trump worked with was to “attack our freedom and way of life, and weaken the United States.”
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Most Americans don’t have deep feelings about Putin. Even describing him as someone who is anti-gay and “murders journalists” doesn’t go far enough. Putin is “an anti-American dictator whose actions routinely endanger the lives of American military personnel around the globe.”
QUID-PRO-QUO: As a rule of thumb, a 2000 year old dead language is usually less clear than standard English: “He got paid.”
KOMPROMAT: We don’t need to introduce a Russian word into the American vocabulary either. Let’s just use a common English one: “Blackmail.” Whether or not there really is a “pee tape” is irrelevant because Trump is lying about his relationship with Russian spy operations and they can come forward with additional evidence to prove it any time. That means they’ve got him under their thumb.
Okay, now let’s tie it all together. We started with this statement: “The Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the hacking campaign against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, undermined our democracy, and the collusion and quid-pro-quo with Vladimir Putin appears to be ongoing — possibly because Russian Intelligence has kompromat on Trump.”
Now let’s rephrase: “The Trump team worked with Russian spies. The spies broke into the offices of both political parties and stole whatever they could. The Russian spy operation was run by an anti-American dictator to attack our way of life and weaken our country. The Trump team worked with that operation because they got paid, got help with their campaign, and feared blackmail — and they are continuing to collaborate to this day.”
When you say it like that, it kinda sounds bad, doesn’t it?
