Retribution vs. Revenge

Retribution vs. Revenge. Which side shall win?
So far, retribution is winning, at least in the Washington Post.
Today's headline:

WaPo 02082020

And then there is the first line of the story:
"President Trump on Friday punished two witnesses who testified in the investigation that led to his impeachment, removing them from their posts in an apparent campaign to exact retribution on his perceived enemies in the wake of his acquittal in the Senate this week." [Emphasis addded]

"Retribution" means giving back what is due and has come to mean "punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act." as dictionary.com tells us. "Revenge" means to come back, but as diffen.com tells us in contrast with avenge which means to punish a wrongdoing with the intent of seeing justice done, revenge is more personal, less concerned with justice and more about retaliation by inflicting harm. So you avenge wrongdoing to seek justice, but you seek revenge if a person's actions hurt you, whether or not those actions were morally wrong. But you seek retribution if those actions were morally wrong and those actions hurt you.

When Vindman testified before Congress truthfully to matters consistent with other truth tellers like Marie Yovanovitch who testified, did he do wrong? No, of course not. Therefore, "retribution" as a description of Trump's behavior has no place in objective description of these events. But using the term "retribution" works well if you are WaPo and your goal is not objective reporting, but is "balanced" treatment of the personalities in the news. If WaPo reporters wrote only of vengeance and revenge, readers might think of Trump as a petty person. Better to provide balanced coverage. The subheadline imples this - rather than calling Trump's actions "vindictive", WaPo shifts to the passive voice and calls them "moves that were condemned as vindictive and an attempt to intimidate officials." That pesky passive voice is always a sure sign of an attempt to balance the reporting.

"Retribution" has a softer sound to it and implies normalcy, but most of all, as noted above, the term implies that the action is proper and fitting to the circumstances. That's why the White House prefers that term and used it this week in their official statement on the impeachment outcome:

"Rep. Adam Schiff lied to Congress and the American people with a totally made up statement about the President’s phone call.  Will there be no retribution? "

That happens to sound like a threat as well...

Nothing to worry about here. No creeping fascism. Just an incremental change. The President can hire and fire officials at any time for any reason. Yes, and he can wait until the day after the Senate vote to acquit him. Nothing wrong with that. Apparently he can do anything he wants. Anything. And the mainstream press will do their best to balance it.