Plausible

Plausible (pronounced plaw-zuh-buhl)

(1) Having an appearance of truth or reason; seemingly worthy of approval or acceptance; credible; believable; possibly or probably true.

(2) Well-spoken and apparently, but often deceptively, worthy of confidence or trust.  Obtaining approbation; specifically pleasing; apparently right; specious.

(3) Worthy of being applauded; praiseworthy; commendable; ready (obsolete).

1535–1545: From the Middle English, from the Latin plausibilis (deserving applause, praiseworthy, acceptable, pleasing), the construct being plausus (past participle of plaudere (to applaud)) + ibilis (ible) (the Latin adjectival suffix (now usually in a passive sense) which creates meanings "able to be, relevant or suitable to, in accordance with" or expressing capacity or worthiness in a passive sense). The meaning "having the appearance of truth" is noted from the 1560s.  The plausible has become nuanced (the comparative more plausible, the superlative most plausible) but synonyms (of the historic meaning) include credible, probable, persuasive, possible, logical, valid, conceivable, tenable, creditable, likely, presumable, sound & supposable.  Plausible is an adjective, plausibly is an adverb, plausibility is a noun; the noun plural is plausibilities (although the antonym implausibilities is probably the more often heard form.

Cynicism is nothing new and in English the meaning "having a specious or superficial appearance of trustworthiness" had been appended as early as the 1560s.  The noun has been documented since the 1590s in the sense of "quality of being worthy of praise or acceptance" although it too was soon co-opted and by at least the 1640s was also used to suggest "a specious or superficial appearance of being right or worthy of acceptance".  The adjective implausible (not having an appearance of truth or credibility) dates from the 1670s although as late as earlier in the century it was still being used in its original sense of "not worthy of applause".  There's a prejudice that "implausible" and related forms are used more often than "plausible" and its relations nut it may simply we we notice the former more and "plausible deniability" is really just a loaded way of saying "implausible".

Plausible Deniability

Plausible deniability is a construct of language to be used in situations where it’s possible to tell lies because it’s not possible for others to prove the truth.  In common law jurisdictions, it exists also as a legal concept given the evidential onus of proof falls (usually) not upon the defendant so if the opponent cannot offer evidence to support an allegation, variously beyond reasonable doubt or on the balance of probabilities, accusations can plausibly be denied regardless of the truth.  Most associated with politicians or public officials but practiced also by those in corporate chains of command, it’s used usually to deny knowledge of or responsibility for anything unlawful, immoral or in some way disreputable.  Depending on the circumstances, it can protect institutions from damage or, more typically, shift blame (and consequences) from someone senior to others lower in the hierarchy.  While the art & science of plausible deniability doubtlessly has been practiced since the origins of humanity, the phrase was coined within the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), apparently as early as the 1950s although it seems not to have appeared in any printed source available to the public until 1964 and became part of general use only during the Watergate crisis (1973-1974).  Some sources credit Allen Dulles (1893–1969; Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) 1953-1961) himself with the first public use but, like his brother (John Foster Dulles (1888–1959; US Secretary of State 1953-1959)), he's blamed for much.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Within the CIA, it described the withholding of information from senior officials in order to protect them from repercussions in the event that illegal or unpopular activities became public knowledge.  This was a time when the CIA was lawfully permitted to assassinate people, especially uncooperative politicians in troublesome countries.  It's obviously a murky business but the consensus seems to be the CIA still kills people but never uses the word assassination and, dating from an executive order issued by Gerald Ford (1913–2006; US president 1974-1977), the agency is no longer allowed to kill heads of state.  This prohibition was presumably a kind of "professional courtesy" on the part of President Ford and one which he must have hoped would be reciprocated.  It's not difficult to guess which countries definitely have at least one executioner silently on the payroll and which almost certainly don't but most are in that grey area of uncertainty.

Alastair Campbell (b 1957; Downing Street Director of Communications & official spokesperson (1997–2003) rear) with Vladimir Putin (b 1952; Prime-Minister of Russia 1999-2000 & 2008-2012, President of Russia 1999-2008 & since 2012, left) and Tony Blair (b 1953; UK Prime Minister 1997-2007, right).  Mr Putin in recent years has stretched plausible deniability well beyond the point at which plausibility can be said to have become implausible and the not infrequently seen: "cause of death: falling from window of high building" is known by Russians as the "oligarch elevator".  Predating even the Tsarist state, grim humor has a long tradition in Russia.    

One fine practitioner of the art was one-time tabloid journalist Alastair Campbell, spokesman for the New Labour government during most of Tony Blair’s premiership.  Campbell added a post-modern twist in that he dealt mostly with journalists who knew when he was lying and they knew that he knew they knew.  Things evolved to the point where Campbell came to believe this was proof of his cleverness and some suspected he began to lie, even when the truth would have been harmless, just to show-off his cynical contempt for just about everyone else.  It worked for a while and certainly suited the New Labour zeitgeist but later, when employed as press officer for the British & Irish Lions on their 2005 tour of New Zealand, his effectiveness was limited because even when telling the truth, which, in fairness, he often did, the baggage of his past made everything sound like spin and lies.  The Lions lost the test series 3-0, the first time in 22 years they lost every test match on tour but nobody suggested Campbell was in anyway responsible for the on-field performance.  Still, plausibility deniability remains an essential skill in modern media management.  An example would be:

(1) You run a government in some country about which, for a variety of reasons, Western governments tend not to make tiresome complaints.  Here, you can do just about anything you wish.

(2) One of your people has run away to another country and is being really annoying.  You arrange to have him invited home for discussions over a cup of coffee.

(3) They crew sent to issue the invitation botch the job, murdering him in a quite gruesome manner (ie the method not far removed from how they dispatch them on home soil).

(4) You deny it was an execution, suggesting death happened when an argument about football or something became heated.  (Plausible denial #1).

(5) Didn’t work.  You now deny ordering any connection with the operation, saying it was an unauthorized rogue team.  (Plausible denial #2).

(6) The other country lists nineteen suspects involved in the murder and demands extradition for trial.

(7) You work out which of the suspects is most expendable and it's announced he had died in "an accident" (that and "natural causes" often a grey area you've noticed).  You hope the sacrifice will satisfy honor on both sides.  (Plausible denial #3).

(8) Problem isn’t going away, even though kind folks in many countries are helping you try to make it go away.  You have the remaining eighteen suspects arrested and locked-up somewhere reasonably pleasant and most secret.

(9) Other country is still being tiresome, maintaining people who kill others should be tried for murder in country where crime was committed.  You understand the legal point but still can't see what all the fuss is about.

(10) You arrange it to be announced the eighteen suspects are dead, all SWATE (shot while attempting to escape).  (Plausible denial #4).  The system works.

Billigung

Billigung (pronounced bill-a-ghin)

(1) To approve.

(2) To acquiesce.

(3) Tacitly to accept; not to oppose.

(4) "Looking the other way" from something one would not wish to admit knowledge of; a means of creating a defense of plausible deniability; a self-denial of knowledge.

1300s: A Modern German form from the Old High German billīh (appropriate), from the Proto-Germanic biliz (merciful, kind, decent, fair), the variant being Billigung (approval; acceptance), the construct being billig(en) +‎ -ung (from the Middle High German -ung & -unge, from the Old High German -unga, from the Proto-Germanic -ungō; it was used to forms nouns from verbs, usually describing either an event in which an action is carried out, or the result of that action).  The third-person singular & simple present tense is billigt, the past tense is billigte, the past participle is gebilligt and the auxiliary haben.  In German, bein a noun there's always an initial capital but when used in English as a general descriptor (sepecially in a legal context), it usually all in lower-case.  Billigung is a noun and in German, there's no plural form although in English-language texts it might for the sake of clarity appear as "billigungs".

When wishing not to know, look the other way

The German Billigung is not so much hard to translate as able to be translated in a number of senses; context is everything.  The way it is used to mean “looking away; avoiding specific knowledge of something which one knows or suspects is happening” was clarified in 1977.  Albert Speer (1905-1981, Reich Minister for Armaments 1942-1945), the convicted war criminal, had always denied any knowledge of the Holocaust and was displeased when sent the English translation of a profile to be published in Die Zeit magazine in which Billigung had been rendered as his “...tacit consent...” of the final solution.  This he corrected, explaining Billigung in this context meant “looking away”.  This meant he averted his gaze from the worst crime of the criminal regime he served in order to be able to deny he knew of it.  Speer, predictably, was able to summon a word to explain this too: Ahnumg (the sensing of something without quite knowing exactly what).  He did at least concede the implication of his translation “...is as grave…” as the original, one biographer noting that had Speer said as much at his trial “…he would have been hanged.”

Albert Speer in conversation with his lawyer Dr Hans Flächsner (1896-dod unrecorded, right) and a legal associate, Nuremburg, 1945.

Other historians and some lawyers disagreed with that but it was an assertion the author was unable to pursue.  When she tried to nudge Speer a little further, pointing out that for one to look away from something, one must first know it's there, he didn’t deny what he’d earlier said but added they “…must never speak of it again".  The moment passed and within weeks he would be dead, dying "on the job" in police slang.  Some have noted the feeling Speer conveyed of always somehow longing to confess his knowledge of the Holocaust.  He so often came so close to admitting he knew what he'd always denied (indeed, in one letter discovered after his death he conceded, despite decades of denial, he'd in 1943 attended the session of a conference during which Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) explained the mechanics of the the Holocaust and the Nazi rationale for its execution) as if the last great act of his life would have been to admit worst of the the guilt he convinced himself (and some others) he'd evaded when the IMT (International Military Tribunal) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) convicted him of war crimes & crimes against humanity (counts 3 & 4) and sentenced him to 20 imprisonment.

Looking the other way.

In what he described as a “...leadership failure...", former Australian cricket captain Steve Smith (b 1989) has admitted he "didn't want to know about it" when he became aware “something” was being planned after seeing team mates in a dressing room discussion.  Their talks he witnessed were about ball-tampering, a form of cheating which came to be known as sandpapergate.  Billigung is one of those useful German creations (zeitgeist, schadenfreude etc) which in one word conveys what might in English take a dozen or more.  Operating somewhere on the spectrum of plausible deniability, Billigung is where someone hears of or perhaps “senses” something of which they’d prefer there be no admissible evidence of their knowledge; they “look the other way”.

Gladys Berejiklian (b 1970; Premier (Liberal) of New South Wales 2017-2021) & Daryl Maguire (b 1959, MLA (Liberal) for Wagga Wagga 1999-2018).

For some, Billigung might have come to mind when pondering the recording of a telephone call between then New South Wales (Australia) Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Daryl Maguire, another member of the same parliament with whom she was in an intimate relationship, a man forced to resign as an MP as a result of an (ongoing)  investigation by the NSW Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) for allegedly using his political influence in business activities.  Of interest was the premier’s use of the phrase "I don't need to know about that bit" when the former member began to tell her some details of his dubious deals.  To that pertinent observation, Mr Maguire replied "No, you don't".  The suggestion is the premier failed to declare a conflict of interest when dealing with the allocation of taxpayer funds which would be to the benefit of her then lover.  The words used by the then premier: "I don't need to know about that bit" may be compared with how Speer described his response in mid-1944 to being warned by a friend "never, under any circumstances" "to accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp in Upper Silesia".  Speer's friend explained that at that place he'd "...seen something there which he was not permitted to describe and moreover could not describe".  Having received what he claimed was his first knowledge of Auschwitz, Speer asked no questions of anyone, later admitting: "I did not want to know what was happening there".  That was what he later called Billigung.     

At the time the recording was made public, the former premier denied any wrongdoing beyond having appalling taste in men.  Apart from the men in her life (and not a few women would ruefully admit to having "had a Daryl"), she probably was unlucky.  Billigung has long been a part of that essential tactic of political survival: "plausible deniability".  Actually, as practiced these days, because standards of accountability seem to have declined a bit, denials needs no longer be plausible, just not actually disproven by a publicly available audio tape or film clip.  Others, beyond NSW, might be taking interest, especially those south of the border intimately involved in party machines who, apparently for decades, didn't notice certain things going on around them.     

On 1 October 2021, the NSW ICAC announced certain investigations into the former premier's conduct in office.  Specifically, ICAC is focusing on the period between 2012-2018 and her her involvement in the circumstances in which public money was given to a shooting club and a conservatorium of music and whether that conduct was “...liable to allow or encourage the occurrence of corrupt conduct by Mr Maguire”.  The ICAC will explore whether the conduct constituted a “breach of public trust” by placing the former premier in a position where a conflict of interest existed between her public duties and private interests “...as a person who was in a personal relationship” with Mr Maguire.  The commission will also investigate whether she failed to report what could be defined as reasonable suspicions that “...concerned or may concern corrupt conduct in relation to the conduct of Mr Maguire”.  As a point of law, the ICAC is concerned with actual substantive conduct and conflicts of interest.  It is not the test of "apprehended bias" applied to the judiciary where judgements can be set aside if a court finds there could have been a "reasonable perception" of bias or conflict of interest in some way involving a judge.  To the ICAC, any degree of perception, reasonable or not, is not relevant, their findings must be based on actual conduct.

On 1 October 2021, Berejiklian announced her resignation from both the premiership and the legislative assembly.  There are critics of the NSW ICAC who oppose the public hearings and feel its rules permit an exercise of powers rather too much like the Court of Star Chamber which they say it too closely resembles.  However, the former premier can reflect that unlike the IMT at Nuremberg, neither the Star Chamber nor the ICAC were vested with capital jurisdiction so there’s that.

Dieselgate and implausible deniability

Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler (b 1963, right) with his lawyers Ulrike Thole-Groll (left) & Thilo Pfordte (centre) during his trial, Munich District Court, May 2023.

The billigung defense is still heard in German courts and if not always exculpatory, lawyers still appreciate its effectiveness in mitigation.  Rupert Stadler began his career with Audi AG (a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group) in 1990 and between 2010-2018 was Audi’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO).  The scandal which came to be known as “dieselgate” involved companies in the Volkswagen group (and others) installing “cheat” software in diesel-powered vehicles so excessive exhaust emissions wouldn’t be detected during official testing and, after years of obfuscation, Volkswagen in 2015 admitted that was what exactly they’d done.  Civil and criminal proceedings in a number of jurisdictions ensued and thus far the fines alone have cost the group well over €34 million.  There have also been jail sentences imposed, something which presumably would have been in Herr Stadler’s thoughts when, in March 2018, Munich prosecutors named him as a suspect in their investigations.  A week later, he was arrested and held in an Augsburg prison, apparently as a precautionary move because it was claimed he was tampering with evidence by making a telephone call in which he suggested putting a witness “on leave”.  After a month, he was released on bail, subject to certain conditions.

In September 2020, Herr Stadler’s trial on charges of fraud began and for years (proceedings now take rather longer than in 1945-1946) he denied all wrongdoing until, in May 2023, he accepted a plea deal offered by Judge Stefan Weickert which would require him to admit guilt.  To date, he’s the highest-ranking executive to confess, tempted apparently by (1) the preponderance of evidence before the court which made it clear he was guilty as sin and (2) the deal limiting his punishment to a €1.1 million fine and a suspended sentence which would not see him jailed, an attractive alternative to the long term of imprisonment he otherwise faced upon conviction.  As confessions go however, it was among the more nuanced.  His lawyer read a statement saying the defendant (1) did not know that vehicles had been manipulated and buyers had been harmed, but (2) he acknowledged it was a possibility and accepted that, adding that in his case (3) there was a need for more care.  A classic piece of billigung, was the line (4) “I didn't know, but I recognized it as possible and accepted that the properties of diesel engines might not meet legal approval requirements” while the statement (5) “I have to admit the allegations overall” had an echo of Speer’s admission of “a general responsibility” while denying personal guilt.  Still, it must have conformed with the terms of the plea bargain because it was accepted by the judge.  His lawyer read the statement, apparently because he couldn’t bring himself personally to utter it but when asked by the judge if the words were his own, Herr Stadler replied (6) “Ja”.

Lindsay Lohan with Audi A5 cabriolet, Los Angeles, May 2011.  Ms Lohan apparently avoided being affected by the dieselgate scandal, all the photographs of her driving Audis have featured gas (petrol) powered cars.

Outside the court, his lawyer was a little more expansive, admitting her client had allowed vehicles equipped with manipulating software to remain on sale even after learning of the scam.  “In the course of addressing the diesel issue" after the revelations became public, Stadler “neglected” to inform business partners that cars with so-called defeat devices were still going on the market, meaning he was “accepting that vehicles equipped with the illegal software would go on sale” she said.  Although it may have been stating the obvious, she added Herr Stadler regretted he’d been unable to “resolve the crisis”.  The carefully composed text may however have averted another crisis, lawyers noting the cryptic nature of some of his comments might be explained by a desire not to create grounds for additional claims by consumers for financial compensation.

How that might unfold remains to be seen but on 27 June 2023 the Munich court handed down a 21 month sentence, suspended for three years, a fine of €1.1 million (US$1.2 million) also imposed; that will go to the federal government and charities, the court ruled without providing details.  Herr Stadler was the first member of the Volkswagen board member to be sentenced for his part in the scandal, the judgment coming some four years after prosecutors first laid fraud charges.  Guilty verdicts were also delivered against two former Audi executives: head of engine development Wolfgang Hatz (b 1959) and lead diesel engineer Giovanni Pamio (b 1963) who were handed suspended jail sentences of 24 months and 21 months, respectively.  Hatz was fined €400,000 (US$437,000) and Pamio €50,000 (US$55,000).  All three were guilty as sin so the verdicts were unsurprising.

Dr Angela Merkel (b 1954; chancellor of Germany 2005-2021) & Dr Martin Winterkorn (b 1947; CEO of Volkswagen AG 2007-2015).

The long-running scandal (the fines and settlements thus far ordered having cost the group some €33 billion (US$36 billion)) still has some way to run because the case against former CEO Martin Winterkorn has yet to be heard although he’s already agreed to pay VW €11.2 million (US$12.3 million) after an internal investigation found he failed properly to respond to signs the company may have been using unlawful technology which enabled its diesel engines to evade emissions testing and it's not yet clear if Dr Winterkorn will try the billigung defense.  Herr Stadler was required to pay VW €4.1 million ($US4.5 million) under terms agreed following the same investigation.  The company clearly wished to move on and in separately issued statements, Volkswagen and Audi said they were not party to Tuesday’s proceedings, which should be “viewed independently” of proceedings against the companies which had (in Germany) been finalized in 2018.  Audi seemed anxious to confirm it was now a righteous corporation, saying “Audi has made good use of the crisis as an opportunity to start over.  We have updated our systems, processes and checks to ensure compliance company-wide.”  It concluded by noting it had since “cultivated and strengthened a culture of constructive debate.”  In exchange for agreeing to pay the fines, prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Volkswagen and Audi.

1973 Pontiac Trans-Am SD-455.

In being caught cheating by programming the control systems on diesel engines to comply with exhaust emissions rules during testing, but not in real-world driving, Volkswagen was not unique.  In 1973, noting the extinction of the genuine “muscle car” (an ecosystem which only a half-decade earlier had been wildly vibrant), GM’s (General Motors) PMD (Pontiac Motor Division), after some hesitation, decided that there was potential in being the only player in a market segment which, though shrunken, still existed.  To be the exclusive supplier of what demand there was, Pontiac resurrected its storied “SD” (Super Duty) moniker and concocted a high-output variant of their 455 cubic inch (7.5 litre) V8, the central feature of which was a pair of cylinder heads with a better flow-rate than anything Detroit had to that point manufactured for street use, the design emerging from California’s famed Air Flow Research company.  The engineering was impressive as it had to be meet the twin-fork parameters of (1) generating 300 net HP (horsepower) and (2) complying with the EPA’s (Environmental Protection Authority) tail-pipe emission rules.  Unfortunately, on-board electronic circuitry hadn’t then advanced to the point where such a compromise could (lawfully) be achieved; the SD-455 could produce the power or it could reach the emission standards but couldn’t do both.

1973 Pontiac Trans-Am SD-455.

As a work-around (a euphemism for cheating), what PMD’s engineers did was read the EPA’s protocols and, noting the test duration was 50 seconds, rig up a clever device which shut off the EGR (exhaust gas re-circulation) valve after 53 seconds, thereby gaining the desired additional HP.  However, the EPA’s engineers smelled a rat and it didn’t take them long to trace the trick.  Pontiac’s team received an (unofficial) commendation for cleverness but were also graded an “F” (fail) and told to try again.  That’s why the production SD-455 was rated at 290 HP rather than the original 310, the missing power the result of the Ram-Air III camshaft being used in lieu of the more aggressive Ram-Air IV unit.  Still, the EPA’s staff turned in a more impressive performance than that of the later eurocrats who “caught” Volkswagen only because Mercedes-Benz snitched on them in exchange for immunity from prosecution.  As things turned out, the SD-455 was available for two seasons in that troubled decade although production numbers were low, 295 in 1973 (252 Trans Ams & 43 Firebird Formulas) and 1001 in 1974 (943 Trans Ams & 58 Formulas).  At the time, genuinely it was the most powerful US built car and as the “last of the original muscle cars”, the SD-455s went on to become a collectable with fine examples typically now attracting US$100-125,000 although, in 2023, one exceptional specimen at auction realized US$200,000.

1974 Pontiac Trans-Am SD-455.

So, although it may seem those in the Fourth Reich were very harshly treated compared with PMD which received not even a “slap on the wrist” and merely was asked to “come back when it’s fixed”, the situation was very different in that not one non-compliant Pontiac ever appeared in a showroom compared with the 11 million-odd toxic VW and Audi diesels sold to unsuspecting customers.  The other difference is that nobody in PMD’s boardroom had any knowledge of the low skulduggery being visited upon innocent EGR valves whereas in Wolfsburg and Stuttgart, in that redolent phrase from German historiography: “they all knew”.  Although the final accounting hasn’t yet been done, by mid 2026, Dieselgate’s global cost to Volkswagen (covering regulatory fines, criminal penalties, civil settlements, vehicle buybacks, technical refits & repairs, legal costs and customer compensation) is estimated to have been some US$30–35 billion thus far.  Calculations of the hit to “reputational damage” vary but all concede it “was not a good look”.

Meddle

Meddle (pronounced med-l)

(1) To involve oneself in a matter without right or invitation; to interfere officiously or unwantedly.

(2) To intervene, intrude or pry.

(3) To interest or engage oneself; to have to do (with), in a good sense (obsolete).

(4) To mix something with some other substance; to commingle, combine, blend (an obsolete form used between the fourteenth & seventeenth centuries by apothecaries and others (the synonyms being bemix & bemingle)).

(5) To have sex (a fourteenth century euphemism now obsolete except as in US regional slang, south of the Mason-Dixon Line (also in the variant “ming”)).

1250–1300: From Middle English medlen (to mingle, blend, mix), from the Anglo-Norman medler, a variant of Anglo-Norman and Old North French medler, a variant of mesler & meller (source of the Modern French mêler), from the Vulgar Latin misculō & misculāre, frequentative of the Latin misceō & miscēre (to mix).  The Vulgar Latin was the source of the Provençal mesclar, the Spanish mezclar and the Italian mescolare & meschiare), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European root meik- (to mix).  The similar noun mélange (a mixture, a medley (usually in the sense of "an uncombined mingling on elements, objects, or individuals”)) dates from the 1650s, from the fifteenth century French mélange, from mêler (to mix, mingle), from the Old French mesler (to mix, meddle, mingle).  Meddle, meddlest & meddled are verbs , meddling is a noun, verb & adjective, meddlement, meddlesomeness & meddler are nouns, meddlesome is an adjective and meddlingly & meddlesomely are adverbs; the most common noun plural is meddlers.

The word began in the sense of “to mix” and was used by many in professions which dealt with the mixing of stuff (apothecaries, bakers, chefs etc) and for the late fourteenth century came to be used to mean "to busy oneself, be concerned with, engage in" which soon gained the disparaging sense of "interfere or take part in inappropriately or impertinently, be officious, make a nuisance of oneself", which was the idea of meddling too much, the surviving sense of the word.  Similarly, the noun meddler (agent noun from the verb meddle), evolved over the same time from a "practitioner" to "one who interferes with things in which they have no personal or proper concern; a nuisance".  The mid-fourteenth century noun meddling (action of blending) was a verbal noun from the verb meddle which evolved with the newer meaning "act or habit of interfering in matters not of one's proper concern"; it has been used as a present-participle adjective since the 1520s, most famously as “meddling priest”, a phrase which described the habit of Roman Catholic clergy to assume the right to intrude uninvited into affairs of state or the lives of individuals.  There appears to be no record of meddle being applied as a collective noun but “meddle of priests” is tempting (though suggestions for a clerical collective are many).  Meddle & meddled meddling are verbs, meddling is a verb & adjective, meddler is a noun and meddlingly an adverb.  Words which can to some degree be synonymous with meddle include to some degree includes hinder, impede, impose, infringe, intrude, tamper, advance, encroach, encumber, inquire, interlope, interpose, invade, kibitz, molest, obtrude, pry, snoop & trespass.

Three popes attended by a meddle of meddling priests during an ad limin.  Pope Saint John Paul II (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005) in 2004 (left), Pope Benedict XVI (b 1927; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus since) in 2012 (centre) & Pope Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013) in 2019.  The ad limina visits (from the Latin ad limina apostolorum (to the threshold of the apostles) are obligatory pilgrimages to Rome made by all bishops, during which they pray at the tombs of Saint Peter & Saint Paul before meeting with the pope and Vatican officials.  During their ad limina, bishops present a quinquennial report of matters in their respective diocese, considered usually to represent the truth if not the whole truth.

One of the more memorable expressions of the tension between secular and ecclesiastical authority on Earth was "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" (sometimes as "meddlesome priest" or "troublesome priest"), attributed to Henry II (1133–1189; King of England 1154-1189) and held to be the phrase which inspired the murder in 1170 of Saint Thomas Becket (circa 1120–1170; Archbishop of Canterbury 1162-1170).  Henry’s rant was a reaction to being told Becket had excommunicated some bishops aligned with the king and like the legendary invective of some famous figures (Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-1658), Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) etc), are probably not a verbatim record of his words but certainly reflect his mood.  The familiar version dates from a work of history published in 1740, the influence apparently biblical, the debt owed to Romans 7:24: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (King James Version (KJV 1611) and the work of subsequent authors does suggest Henry’s words were from the start understood as being a complaint to his staff that none of them appeared to have the initiative needed to act against the wrongs of the archbishop.  While not literally perhaps an order to commit murder, it seems at least to have been an inducement because it prompted four knights to travel to Canterbury Cathedral where they killed the archbishop either deliberately or as a consequence of him resisting attempts to drag him off to face Henry’s wrath.  The chain of events has been used to illustrate contexts as varied as chaos theory, plausible deniability and working towards the leader.

As there are “meddling priests”, so there are “meddling moms”.

Chaos theory explores the idea that something apparently insignificant can trigger a chain reaction of events which conclude with something momentous.  The theory can be mapped onto any sequence of events, the interest being in tracking lineal paths in behavioral patterns which might appear random.  The sequence which lay between Henry’s words and the decapitation of the saintly archbishop was, by the standards of some of what’s been explored by chaos theory, simple and to some degree perhaps predictable but there was nothing wholly deterministic.  Some nefarious activity is wrongly attributed to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but it seems that genuinely they did coin the phrase plausible deniability.  It emerged in the post Dulles (Allen Dulles, 1893–1969; US Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) 1953-1961) aftermath to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and was a collection of informal protocols whereby senior government officials (particularly the president) were “protected” from responsibility by not being informed of certain things (or at least there being no discoverable record (a la the smoking gun principle)) which could prove transmission of the information.  Henry II’s "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" is a variation in that it once deconstructed, it can be interpreted as a wish the archbishop should in some way be “disappeared” yet is sufficiently vague that a denial that that was the intention is plausible.

It’s related also to “working towards the Führer” an explanation English historian Sir Ian Kershaw (b 1943) most fully developed as part of his model explaining the structures and operation of the Nazi state.  For decades after the war, there were those who claimed that because, among the extraordinary volume of documents uncovered after the end of the Third Reich, nothing had ever been found which proved Hitler had ever issued the order which triggered the Holocaust, it should be assumed he knew nothing of it.  To emphasize the basis of their claims in this matter, some who wrote attempting to exonerate Hitler of his most monstrous crime styled themselves as “archivists” rather than historians, the heavy-handed hint being they were relying wholly on evidence, not speculative interpretation.  Kershaw’s arguments proved compelling and now few accept the view that the absence of anything in writing is significant and there’s no doubt Hitler either ordered or approved the Holocaust in its most fundamental aspects.

The “working towards the Führer” model did however prove useful in understanding the practical operation (rather than the theoretical structures) of the Führerprinzip (leader principle).  Throughout the many layers of the party and state which interacted to create the Third Reich, it’s clear that not only did Hitler’s words serve to inspire and justify actions of which the Führer was never aware but that much of what was done was based on what people thought he would have said had he been asked.  Hitler didn’t need to order the Holocaust because those around him worked towards what they knew (or supposed) his intent to be.

Scapulimancy

Scapulimancy (pronounced skap-yuh-luh-man-see)

Divination of the future by observation of the cracking of a mammal's scapula (the shoulder blade, the bone connecting the clavicle to the humerus), sometimes after having been heated by fire or a hot instrument.

1870–1875: The construct was scapul(a) + -i- + -mancy.  Scapula was from the Late Latin scapula (shoulder), from the Classical Latin scapulae (shoulders).  The -mancy suffix was from the Latin -mantīa, ultimately from the Ancient Greek μᾰντείᾱ (manteíā) (divination).  In English it was appended to convey the sense either of (1) divination or (2) in fantasy, varieties of magic, especially those controlling or related to specific elements, substances, or themes.  The synonym is omoplatoscopy and the alternative spelling scapulomancy.  Scapulimancy is a noun, scapulimantic is an adjective and scapulimanticly is an adverb.

Sheep shoulder blades.

Divination was from the Latin divinare (to foresee, foretell or predict; tom make prophesy) and is a general term describing attempts to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic ritual or practice, usually involving either (1) some object or objects in which special qualities are said to be vested, (2) an alleged contact or interaction with supernatural entities or agencies such as spirits, gods, god-like-beings or the other forces “of the universe” or (3) the interpretation of signs or omens, variously defined.  As a cultural practice, divination has been identified in many cultures and at the root of it is probably a desire to have explained what is by all other means available, inexplicable.  That obviously offers some potential for exploitation by those seeking social, political or religious authority but it can also be a business model and between that and religion especially, there’s historically been some overlap, something alive and well today.  The notion of using the shoulder blades of slaughtered animals for this purpose may seem strange but as a method it seems no more or less convincing than instruments such as the tea-leaf, rune stones, Tarot-cards or the movement of objects in the heavens, some billions of miles remote from the apparent randomness of events on Earth.

Butchered & dressed lamb shoulder chops (left) and lamb shoulder chops with garlic and rosemary (right).

Although much-associated with priests, magicians and prophets (again, the overlap not hand to find), divination was practiced also by those for whom religion (in the way the word is conventionally understood) wasn’t a significant force.  The Hun of the Eurasian steppe, best remembered for their fifth century invasion of the Roman Empire, may have Turkic language (though one much infused with words from others), are known to have never developed writing and never seem to have flirted beyond the vaguest with God or gods, the only devotional aspect of their culture a kind of “nature worship”, something which would probably now attract much sympathy.  There may though have been something of a cargo-cult in that various objects seem to have been associated with a kind of veneration, notably swords or weapons linked with military success and generals down the ages, however practical and pragmatic they might have been in other matters, are recorded by historians or in diaries as being fond of consulting soothsayers the night before a battle.  The Huns definitely practiced scapulimancy, the logs of travelers and merchants recording how a shaman-like figure would take from the fire the shoulder blades of the roasted sheep, “reading the patterns” on the surface to make predictions for the days, the foretold omens revealed by pits, stains ridges & hollows which made each bone as unique as a finger-print.  This use for the sheep’s scapula adds another layer to the oft-repeated observation about the reductive efficiency of the steppe peoples in the husbanding of their scare resources: “For some purpose, they used every part of the sheep”.  Because the Huns left no written records, all that is known of their scapulimantic technique comes from third-party observers but as far as is known, their practice was in the “pyromantic” tradition (the “preparing” of the bone by leaving it for a time in the embers of the cooking fire), the “apyromantic” (examination after the flesh had been cut from the bone) method most known in Europe & Northern Africa.  Both these descriptions came from the work of nineteenth century anthropologists.

Lohanic scapulae; a tetrad:  Four photographs of Lindsay Lohan's shoulder blades.

It’s not only in the post-Enlightenment West that divination has (mostly) been dismissed as silly superstition, many thinkers from Antiquity pointing out in their writings the absurdity of the idea and their most effective criticism was probably not the abstract arguments philosophers usually can’t resist but a simple “fact-checking”: comparing predictions with outcomes, the success rate found predictably low.  In the text of one sceptic however, there appears to be the first mention of the efficacy, even in the age of climate change, of one reliable prediction about the weather: “three times out of four, the weather tomorrow will be much the same as today.” (YMMV).  However, despite the two-thousand-odd years of intellectual scorn, the lure of prediction by dubious means remains strong, some otherwise respectable publications regularly including a horoscope, even though there’s nothing to suggest astrology is otherwise taken seriously.  It seems star-sighs exert a special fascination and many identify with their birth sign and read the horoscope, even if usually for amusement.  For some though it’s serious.  Nancy Reagan (1921–2016; US First Lady 1981-1989) regularly consulted an astrologer (on the White House payroll for a reputed US$3000 a month) after one warned her husband Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) would be “in danger” on a certain day; on that day he survived an assassination attempt.

Others couldn’t quite decide.  Being interviewed by a prison psychologist in 1945, Rudolf Hess (1894–1987; Nazi Deputy Führer 1933-1941) claimed he’d made his bizarre attempt to secure a negotiated peace between Germany on the UK (his flight to Scotland in May 1941 on the eve of the Nazi’s invasion of the Soviet Union) because the year before “…one of his astrologers had read in the stars that he was ordained to bring about peace”, adding that both Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) and Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) “…had come to have an abiding belief in astrology.”  It was a claim he would repeat to a journalist in the 1980s.  Despite that, as soon as the news of the flight was brought to Hitler at the Berghof (the Führer’s alpine retreat in the Bavarian Alps) the party hierarchy instantly was summoned from Berlin and the scramble was on to find the most plausible way to spin to the world an explanation why the “second man in the Reich” had delivered himself to the enemy.  In the circumstances, madness probably was the best option and the task was made easier by the British who made no attempt to exploit the defection for propaganda purposes.  Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) put out a statement saying Hess had fallen under the influence “…of soothsayers and fortune-tellers” and had become “...a deluded, deranged and muddled idealist, ridden with hallucinations traceable to World War (ie the 1914-1918 conflict) injuries.”  Immediately, just to make things more plausible still, the state security apparatus (a well-oiled machine) conducted a crackdown on soothsayers and fortune-tellers, locking up many until the scandal had passed which it did remarkable quickly.

All must have been forgiven by 1945 when in the Führerbunker Goebbels, after reminding Hitler of the “miracle of the House of Brandenburg” when the death of a czarina had saved Frederick II (Frederick the Great, 1712–1786, Prussian king 1740-1786) from defeat, consulted two horoscopes kept in the files, one written on 9 November 1918 (the date on which the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) was formed), the other from 30 January 1933 (the date Hitler was appointed chancellor).  According to Goebbels, both documents predicted “…the outbreak of the war in 1939, the victories until 1941, and the subsequent series of reversals, with the hardest blows during the first months of 1945, particularly during the first half of April.  In the second half of April we were to experience a temporary success.  Then there would be stagnation until August and peace that same month.  For the following three years Germany would have a hard time, but starting in 1948 she would rise again.”  Confident that “…according to historical logic and justice things were bound to change”, he must have felt vindicated a few days later when the new broke of the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945); history had given Goebbels his czarina: “Bring out our best champagne!” he commanded, adding “And get me the Fuehrer on the telephone!”  Unfortunately for Goebbels, while he might have felt he wrote his will across the sky, the stars dimmed and fell, the horoscopes no more a reliable predictor of the future than scorched shoulder blades.