Is Silence Complicity?

Ivanka Trump, when interviewed by “CBS This Morning” last year, said, “So I hope to make a positive impact.  I don’t know what it means to be complicit, but you know, I hope time will prove that I have done a good job…”  Do you know what “complicit” means?

“Complicit” was selected Word of the Year in 2017 by dictionary.com.  Given what has occurred so far in 2018 it may well be selected a second time.  Complicit means to “knowingly help another in a crime or wrongdoing.”  Everyone should know what the word means.  As the synonyms indicate, it does not mean making a “positive impact.”  To be complicit, the synonyms imply, is to be “conniving, deceitful, duplicitous, scheming, cunning, wily and slippery.”  To be an “accomplice” means to be an “abettor, accessory, confederate, and a collaborator” in a crime or wrongdoing.  “Complicity” is the participation in a criminal act or wrongdoing—a partner in crime or wrongdoing—aiding, encouraging, and sharing in an intent to commit the crime or wrongdoing.

I’m using the words complicit, accomplice, and complicity only in reference to wrongdoing.  A “crime” has not yet been determined by a court of law, but wrongdoing should be evident to anyone and everyone who has read Donald Trump’s tweets over the past several years, to anyone and everyone who has heard him speak (Gold-Star families, African-American congresswomen, immigrants, John McCain, slandering those who oppose him, the justice system and the FBI, his nativism and ugly ethnic and racial slurs.  That, and that alone, is wrongdoing and is based on my understanding of morality, ethics, democracy and my Christian faith.  

Therefore, to be silent is to be complicit—aiding, encouraging, and becoming an accessory to such wrongdoing.  (Unless, of course, you don’t consider it wrongdoing).   Silence implies support.  Silence means acceptance.  Silence is complicity.  Occasionally, we hear a peep from Republican leaders, but it is but a peep.  Democrats, Independents, and people of faith aren’t speaking—hardly a peep is heard.  Silence is complicity and for the most part, all I hear is the “Sound of Silence.”  

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon God they made

And the sign flashed its warning,

In the words that it was forming

And the sign said, “The words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls

And the tenement halls”

And whispered in the sound of silence.