Litigious

   Lawyers argue the meaning of words, insisting that words don't mean what you think they mean and you can't know what they really mean until a lawyer explains what they mean, regardless of how well you know the language or how well educated you are in linguistics, language usage or any other subject.

   In the litigious profession, whoever is most skillful at arguing the meanings of a word wins the argument.

   Fairness and accuracy don't enter into it.

   Or as Humpty Dumpty put it, "My words mean what I say they mean, neither more nor less." Put another way, you can't know what a word means until the litigator tells you what it means.

   That from the thin-shelled advisor sitting on a wall, groundless on any firm position.

   Currently, politicians are arguing over whether the Constitution applies to candidates for office.

   The 14th Amendment says no person can hold any government office if that person has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the United States, "or given aid or comfort" to anyone who has.

   But the argument now is that this does not apply to those who participated in the Jan. 6 episode, or gave aid and comfort to those who did, until after the Constitutional provision has been litigated and a court decides whether it really does apply.

   Litigious lawyers will argue the meanings of these words and whoever wins the argument establishes the meaning.

   But while that may apply to the specific case under argument, it is not appropriate to generalize. Logic 101, basic for law school attendees, teaches that a principle that is true in one case is not necessarily true for all cases. You need several examples to establish a pattern.

   The argument now is that the Jan. 6 episode was, in their perception, a peaceful demonstration, and therefore the Constitutional provision that would prohibit any participant or supporter of the participants from holding any political or governmental office at any level in the United States does not apply.

   Here's a Humpty Dumpty description of what the rest of the world saw as a riot. To his followers, that was a "legitimate political discourse."

   Or as the thin shelled egg man would put it, "You can't know what the Constitution means until I explain to you what it means."

   As if only those who went to the Humpty Dumpty School of Law can understand what words mean. Any others, be they  native speakers of the language, or have college degrees in Linguistics, Journalism, English, history, medicine or any other subject, cannot possibly understand the meanings of words until and unless a litigious litigator explains it in words of one syllable ten times.