Semantics

"My words mean just what I choose them to mean, neither more nor less." -- Humpty Dumpty

   Lawyers are fond of arguing that a word doesn't mean what you may think it means, but instead means something else entirely, and that means the client is not guilty.
   Huh?

   According to Trumpty lawyers holding forth on TV talk shows, collusion, cooperation, and coordination have no relationship to each other, and therefore any attempt to use them to describe the campaign team's meetings with Russians for the exchange of information damaging to the opposition candidate either didn't happen, or if they did, nothing was discussed, and even if it turns out that there were meetings and discussions, "anybody would have done the same," so there was nothing illegal about it, and when it's pointed out that such meetings with foreigners and especially agents of foreign powers are in fact illegal, the lawyers insist it wasn't collusion but merely an offer of cooperation or coordination, and that's not illegal.

   Huh? Are we clear so far? No? Confused? Then the lawyers have succeeded in blurring the issues, so you should therefore believe them no matter what your common sense and knowledge of words tells you.

   Let's start with some definitions, and the prefix co- found on all three words at issue: Collusion, cooperation and coordination.
   The prefix co- means "together." To cooperate, then, means to operate together. To coordinate means to arrange things together. And collusion, according to any standard dictionary, means to dream or play together, to cooperate to arrange certain goals. One difference is that the word "collusion" carries a negative implication of fraud, or as my copy of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary puts it, "a secret agreement and cooperation for fraudulent or deceitful purposes; fraud, deceit." The origin of the word is from the Latin col- plus -ludere, meaning to play together.
   Otherwise, all three mean that two sides of an issue are working together toward a mutual goal. In the current political sense, Russian and Trump delegates were cooperating in secret to coordinate efforts to make the opposition candidate, Hillary Clinton, look bad and thus help their favored candidate, Donald Trump, win through to the presidency.
   Whether these efforts actually were a successful, determining factor in the outcome of the election is a separate issue. The fact remains that they met together (cooperate, coordinate, collude) with the same goal in mind.
   Such a meeting, by its own existence, is unethical, immoral and illegal, according to American law and custom.
   The story is getting big play in news media, as it should, because the people have a right to know what the Trumpians were and are up to. If it's something good, that will be reported. If not, that also will be reported.
   The big difference between the terms is that collusion implies something nefarious. And once other lawyers gather sufficient evidence to prove the case, the perpetrators will go to jail, they will go directly to jail, they will not pass Go, they will not collect $100 from the Monopoly bank in an Atlantic City casino, and they will forfeit their place in line as the political game continues.