A good dictionary is a good investment. It can save a person from all sorts of grief and confusion. Take, for example, the current hyperventilating over the search warrant executed by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago. Not a few Republicans were outraged. And the pending $80 billion appropriation bill for the IRS? Well, that really fried their toast.
Tweet from Ted Cruz (R-TX): “The Manchin-Schumer bill will create 87,000 new IRS agents to target regular, everyday Americans. STOP BIDEN’S SHADOW ARMY!”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Fox: “Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa?”
Tweet from Roma McDaniel (RNC Party Chair): “How long until Democrats send the IRS ‘SWAT’ team after your kids lemonade stand?”
Troubling questions, indeed! I think what is happening is that these people have confused the FBI with the IRS. After all, they both have the letter “I” in their acronyms. To add to the confusion, the “I” in FBI stands for Investigation, and the “I” in IRS stands for Internal. Do you see it? Both words start with the letters “In.”
Understandably, it might be convenient to lump all the “In” words together (There are a lot of them), but internal, investigation, infidel, incompetent, inefficient all have different meanings. The “In” words are proud of their unique definitions; they have worked hard for them, and deserve to be called by their proper names. And they are right there in the dictionary.
Internal: on the inside, like organs.
Investigation: a careful search; detailed or careful examination
(Note: Neither definition mentions AK-15s or lemonade stands.)
So if you are fearful that a large group of IRS stormtroopers are going to burst through your door, demanding your lemonade receipts, just chill. Ain’t gonna happen. And unless you have boxes of classified documents under your bed, you are safe from the FBI as well.
“It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.”
Freeman Dyson
Objects in a Bag 