if you’re ever under interrogation

Last night I mentioned that the second guy at the airport, the one who really interrogated me, was quite a bit nicer than the tough-talking buzz-cut kid I first dealt with.

What I forgot to mention is how my conversation with the second guy ended. It seemed like it might go on forever, until he asked me what I was going to speak about at Villanova. When I said “metaphysics,” he gave me one of those little speeches that say: “You and your big words! I don’t even know what metaphysics means, and I’m not going to ask.” It was good-natured in tone, not anti-intellectual, but the important point is that my use of the word “metaphysics” ended the interrogation.

And this reminded me of something Bill Martin told us in class one night after his voyage to Peru in the 1990’s. He and a small group of Western Leftists had been arrested at a hotel and taken to a prison to be interrogated by military police. When they came to Bill and asked who “sent” him to Peru, he responded (naturally, not by design) with a long technical speech about Marx. The reaction of the military police was to say: “Shut up! We’ve heard enough from you!”, and they moved on to the next person.

Bill told us half-jokingly at the time that it might be a good lesson to remember for anyone who’s ever interrogated. Last night’s experience reminded me of it. Interrogators don’t want to hear your big words. You can possibly bore your way out of a jam with what sounds to them like pedantry.