The Obama Ambiguity Principle

In mathematics, numbers have no meaning without being described by units. Numbers by themselves are ambiguous and mean nothing. In physics, numbers are often described with not only a magnitude with units, but as vectors meaning they also have a directional component. Properly defined numbers omit ambiguity. The same is true for the practical use of numbers when giving directions. Once again, numbers are need to be defined by units and direction. Such as go East for 5 miles then turn North on highway 49 and go 2.5 miles to exit 23. Without descriptors, numbers are useless.

In the use of words, ambiguity is much more widespread than with numbers. In order to avoid ambiguity a person may use adjectives to better describe nouns or adverbs to describe verbs. Unfortunately, people will purposely omit adjectives or adverbs when describing something to make the meaning as ambiguous as possible. This is especially true in the world of politics and the world of Obama.

Let’s examine a basic example before discussing Obama. The Supreme Court has read the right of privacy into the Constitution in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). However, that is very broad, vague, and ambiguous because privacy can mean so many different things. It can be the right of privacy in terms of civil rights. In can be the right of privacy in terms of conversations, health, wealth, sexual orientation, and so forth. And we know that all things about people are not private. For instance, it’s public knowledge how much everyone pays for a home. And, of course, the NSA is allowed to listen in on our conversations to protect our national security. So the Court’s decision that the right of privacy is contained in the constitution is false. Some rights to privacy are while others are not.

Obama uses ambiguity when explaining terror policies or activities. Obama says we are fighting “extremism” or he may define an act of terror as “workforce violence” or a “manmade disaster”. These are very vague terms. There are all kinds of extremism. Obama just does not want to say Islamic extremism. There is a big difference between Islamic extremists and domestic extremists in terms of violence, and the form of attack. Islamic extremists are suicidal, many other extremist types are not – they try to get away with violence. Islamic extremists’ meticulously plan and define their targets. Other types of violence can be random. Environmental or weather disasters are generally defined by tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, floods, etc. But manmade disaster leaves out these such descriptors for convenience. Workforce violence can be murder, rape, or destruction of private property. Once again this is vague. Why does Obama manipulate words and changes definitions to be vague and ambiguous? Just so his administration does not have say Islamic when defining terror or extremists.

Politicians are savvy this way, to be ambiguous. Obama has been a master of this technique. He is the master of saying a lot about nothing by being vague especially when it comes to terror.