Disrupt the System vs Drain the Swamp

Let me precede my thoughts about semantics with this public service announcement:

THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL POST … SO PLEASE DON’T GO THERE.

Anyone who has been on this planet within the past few millennia certainly knows President Trump’s call to action with the phrase “drain the swamp“.

But do you know about Marianne Williamson, who is running for President of the U.S. again, do you know about her message?

Disrupt the System

If you’ve caught this post, you probably have heard about Marianne. Maybe you’ve heard about her via Commune. Or maybe you’ve heard about A Course in Miracles, but don’t know that Marianne Williamson is connected to its teachings.

My point is–if you’ve been around, you, at the very least, vaguely know about her.

But if you’ve never heard of her, don’t go thinking it’s necessarily important to know her to understand this post. But one of her calls to action is to ‘disrupt the system’.

For the intent of this post, I’d like to discuss these words s vs Trump’s ‘drain the swamp’.

I’m guessing both more or less mean the same thing, yet one seems more aggressive and more destructive, while the other has an air of optimism. Yes, while this is my filter assessing such, you can’t deny dictionary definitions.

According to Webster, ‘drain’ means “to cause the gradual disappearance of”.

‘Disrupt’ means “to break apart”.

‘System’ means all sorts of things, but for these purposes we’ll say “a form of social, economic, or political organization or practice”.

And ‘swamp’ means “a difficult or troublesome situation or object”.

So Williamson’s message is basically suggesting we break apart the big daddy of social, economic, political practices and/or organizations. (AKA: the government.)

Trump’s message says to destroy a difficult and troublesome situation/object. (AKA: the government).

Call me crazy, but semantically speaking, Williamson is onto something. If you can break something apart, you can reform it better. If you totally destroy something, there is nothing left to work with.

Semantics matter. Semantics, intention. It’s sort of everything.

Again, this isn’t meant to be political, and I’m not endorsing anyone or anything. I’m just explaining how I came to the conclusion that one set of words makes me feel a hell of a lot better than another set of words.

And I think that’s pretty damn swell.