“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is absolutely furious with Bernie Sanders. Why? Because he used the appropriate word.

When asked if he would call Suleimani's death an assassination (by @alexrego_tweets) @MikeBloomberg said "that's an outrageous thing to say." On the proper way to speak about his death, MB "I don't know, get a dictionary and take your pick." https://t.co/JMOgO4zqVd pic.twitter.com/38IfwjTELP

— Tim Perry (@tperry518) January 3, 2020

When asked about the descriptor, Bloomberg said: "If he was talking about killing the general ... this is a guy who had an awful amount of American blood on his hands. I think that's an outrageous thing to say."

"Nobody that I know of would think that we did something wrong in getting the general," he said, before adding the U.S. had a "right" and "obligation" to pursue Soleimani.

OK. I got a dictionary and I chose "assassination".

The administration has defended itself, noting that it acted out of self-defense to defeat a dangerous terrorist. U.S. officials also claimed that Soleimani's death occurred "on the battlefield" and therefore didn't meet the legal definition of assassination.

Baghdad airport was a battlefield? And we declared war on Iran?
That's news to me, and to Iraqis as well.

Our so-called leaders speak
With words they try to jail you
They subjugate the meek
But it's the rhetoric of failure
- The Police

This isn't the first time Bernie has been guilty of using the correct word.

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has doubled down this week on calling the recent ouster of Bolivia’s now-former President Evo Morales a “coup,” but few other U.S. lawmakers or candidates followed suit.

The ongoing debate on whether constitutional order was maintained during and after the transition has echoed a larger divide in global politics. Sanders’s view is shared among the global left, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who granted asylum to Morales upon his exit from Bolivia.

But the Trump administration — and opponents of the Latin American populist left embodied by Morales and López Obrador — saw the end of the Morales government as a boon to democracy in the region.

"I oppose the intervention of Bolivia's security forces in the democratic process and their repression of Indigenous protesters. When the military intervened and asked President Evo Morales to leave, in my view, that’s called a coup," wrote Sanders on Twitter Monday evening.

The distinction is important in the U.S. because a coup would require withdrawal of all assistance to the country.

I think that the bipartisan establishment can agree that Ignorance is Strength.