America Censored

This list of atrocities committed by the Trump administration is nearly as long as the list of excuses the low information voters that continue to support him use in pathetic attempts to justify the unjustifiable. Those excuses are often laced with the word "freedom", at times purporting Trump's defense against some mythical deep state conspiracy. Turns out, Trump himself may be leading something of a deep state conspiracy to censor the dissemination of scientific information to the American public.

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the Center for Disease Control was prohibited from using the following seven words in preparation of materials for the FY19 budget: vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence-based and science-based. It's easy to draw lines from those words to issues that Trump has taken a position against but unfathomable that in America words tied to those issues be banned.

Since the initial report, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said the reported decree on banned words was a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process. CDC director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald tweeted Sunday there are no banned words from the agency's vocabulary.

Mischaracterization or not, even the suggestion the administration is attempting to use ambiguous language to advance a political agenda is concerning. The implications of such a move jumps to  terrifying when the target is a non-political agency charged with securing public health. Ambiguity has no place when it comes to addressing threats to the public health. Delivering anything short of specific, evidence-based information puts lives at risk.

The Trump administration has a demonstrated history blatant of censoring facts that do not support its policies. The words climate change and global warming have been disappearing from government websites since January. This simple censorship exercise has been executed with the aplomb of Trump's boss Vladimir Putin across no fewer than four federal agencies.

Censorship by the American government is not American. Trump's willingness to use censorship to advance his agenda is further demonstration of an authoritarian style that continues to divide the country at every turn. Censorship or ambiguous language does not change the truth, it merely masks the inevitable discovery of the facts.

That discovery will come for Donald Trump. It may be delivered soon by Robert Mueller or it may be delivered years from now by future historians. Either way, the lies Trump passes off as alternative facts will not stand the test of time.