Fact, False Claim, or Opinion? A Beginner's Guide for Students and the President

On Sunday, as I planned for the teaching of "Animal Farm" by George Orwell, Mike Pence was interviewed on ABC's This Week, where he painfully attempted to soften Trump's false claim that millions of people voted illegally in California by saying "it's [Trump's] right to express his opinion."

WAIT! I shouted at my computer screen. "You're confusing 'opinion' and 'false claim'!" As an English teacher, I shout at the computer frequently: "Shakespeare didn't say that!" or "Cite your sources!"

A 14-year-old in an intro debate class knows that Trump's tweet "I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally" is not an opinion. "I should have won the popular vote," or even "Too many people vote illegally" are opinions. They carry markers of opinion (should, too many). An opinion is a statement of attitude or self-report, according to this very helpful handout prepared by Dr. Bruce Murray, associate professor of Reading Education at Auburn University.

Trump's Tweet is not an opinion. Nor is it fact (statement about the real world supported by convergent evidence). It is a FALSE CLAIM. That is, it is a "statement about the real world, refuted by the evidence" (Murray). Here is a cogent distillation of that evidence by New York Times election writer Nate Cohen.

When Mike Pence and others defend Trump's outlandish false claims by mislabeling them "opinion," they are distorting meaning in an intentionally misleading way. Consider how labeling false claims as opinion would roll out in a classroom:

Suzy: "There's no school tomorrow!" (false claim)

Teacher: "You have a right to your opinion." (????)

or

Johnny: "The Declaration of Independence was signed by Elvis Presley and Mickey Mouse." (false claim)

Teacher: "You have a right to your opinion." (????)

No. It doesn't work that way. When information is presented as fact (a statement about the real world) but is not true (refuted by the evidence) that is not opinion. It is false claim. In school lingo, we say "That is incorrect." 

And this brings me back to teaching Orwell during the transition to the Trump presidency. Central to Orwell's dystopian "1984" and his cautionary allegory "Animal Farm" is the idea that language matters. What we say--particularly when said from positions of authority or through avenues of wide reach--influences what people believe to be true. 

That is, language manipulation twists thinking. Hence "War is peace / freedom is slavery / ignorance is strength." If those words don't send a chill up your spine as we careen toward a reality in which we consider all things said as equally valid, please read or re-read "1984" today. And while you're at it, you should buy a copy for every Christmas stocking you plan to stuff. That's my opinion.