Posting #2: How words alone tell stories that normalize militarism
Words have always fascinated me: when and how and why they are used, when and how and why they are not, and how they can be filled with new meaning. For instance, the Democrats have repeatedly used the word “insurrection” to describe the deadly assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 but the Republicans have resisted using that word, lest it imply treason. That is, they resisted until March 30, 2023, when Tennessee Republicans named the allegedly peaceful protest staged at their Capitol building an “insurrection” and Montana Republicans called a state representative’s condemnatory statement on the floor an “insurrection.” How can the same word be used in what seem to me to be very different occurrences?
As a scholar of war culture (as opposed to, say, military history or political science), I am especially attuned to the use of war language and how single words or phrases can tell complete stories.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Recently, I published a study of war language usage during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, “’Hunkering Down’ and Other Misnomers: The American War Story During the Pandemic of 2020.” Working from home, teaching classes on-line, and consequently spending most of my days on my computer, I noticed a wide use of the phrase “hunkering down”—instead of the post-9/11 “shelter in place”—to describe how many of us were living our lives. Radio and TV hosts, journalists, on-line newsletters about the US military and about higher ed, research institutions, my own institution of higher education, and my siblings, all were using this term to characterize our lives at that point.
It’s not surprising that we were fearful and were staying at home if we had the choice. We didn’t know if it was safe to be in proximity to other people, we got mixed messages about the need to wear masks, there was no vaccine, we were sanitizing our groceries and our mail, people were getting severely sick and many were dying. Meanwhile, our president was minimizing the virus’ danger and ridiculing our fear.
I was intrigued, though, by how consistently and repeatedly “hunkering down” was being used, especially because I was not sure of what “hunker” meant. What seemed to be implied was static passivity; stay at home, get comfortable, and wait to hear when it’s safe to emerge.
When I looked up the word in the Oxford English Dictionary, however, another definition did not align with how the word was being employed. Instead, “hunker” was defined as “To squat, with the haunches, knees, and ankles acutely bent, so as to bring the hams near the heels, and throw the whole weight upon the fore part of the feet.” This definition neither denoted stasis nor passivity. It seemed to me that the OED definition of “hunker” meant to pause, sure, but in the pausing—with one’s weight on the balls of one’s feet—to be ready at any moment to continue moving. I deduced that “hunker” was a misnomer for what we were experiencing, the word implying a cozy and nonthreatening way to have us stay at home, unlike the fear-inducing “shelter in place.”
Attention to “hunker down” alerted me to the emergence of war language in the Covid discourse, when it appeared the President especially began using words like “wartime president” to describe himself in the earliest days of the pandemic and “heroes” to encourage the cannot-work-from-home sacrifice of health care, education, and grocery store workers. In those same early days, Senator Mitch McConnell called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act a “wartime level of investment in our country,” and gun stores and meatpacking businesses were designated as “essential” and so required to stay operational. Billboards told people that staying at home would be “heroic” while also-“heroic” health care workers were expected to risk their lives by showing up at hospitals. In May, the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper referred to domestic sites of protest as a “battle space.”
The President in that same month must have recognized that calling a limited set of Americans “heroes” was not enough to revive a cratered economy and declining stock market, so he upped the ante by referring to us as “warriors.” It seems to me that, as an honorific, “heroes” only can be designated as such by other people. Heroes cannot on their own decide they are heroic or give themselves the title. Someone who styles himself as a hero is not believable, as though he is protesting too much. People can, however, designate others and themselves as “warriors” and be credible. By June, the President was referring to himself as “the lone warrior.” Despite this war rhetoric, the wartime Defense Production Act, invoked on average 300,000 times a year during the Trump administration, was said to be “disruptive to business” in this period and so almost never was deployed during this so-called wartime. Obviously, this was a special kind of war.
Employing “war” to denote domestic crisis in this country is not unusual; we have a long history of using it in both positive and negative ways. Ostensibly positive “wars” on illiteracy, poverty, and crime are balanced by ostensibly negative “wars” on Christmas and traditional marriage. “War” is also normalized in American culture, from our sports team’s names (eg. Spartans, Warriors, Crusaders, Trojans, Fighting Irish), to the themes of first-person-shooter video games (e.g. “World of Warcraft,” “Call of Duty”), to the “warrior ethos” training not only of the U.S. military but also police forces and Homeland Security agencies. We allude to war when we wear camouflage as a fashion statement, drive Jeeps and Hummers on American roadways, and permit civilians to have unlimited access to weapons of war.
But individual words matter, too. The ubiquity of war language in American culture has a normalizing effect, a condition that minimizes the horrors of war, naturalizes violence, and, I contend, makes Americans more likely to send its armed forces into combat. Talk about something enough times and in enough different media and it assumes the gloss of normalcy. I would even wager that, in American culture, not just normalcy but superiority is signaled by this language. “Warriors,” I have found in my most recent studies, are often held up as exemplary patriots and military service members are held up as epitomizing that role. The “Soldier’s Creed,” memorized and recited by US Army recruits, clarifies this: “I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.”
So when the president and his administration began to use war language, I was attentive. It was clear to me then that the American war narrative was inadequate to dealing with the pandemic crisis. While it conveys urgency and, one would hope, a we’re-all-in-this-together solidarity, it seemed not to be working that way. Instead, as I concluded in my “Hunkering Down” essay, war language is used as “an emotionally-driven shortcut.”
Invoke “war,” the supposition may go, and the united populace unquestioningly will rally around the flag. Invoke “war,” and material voluntarily will be produced by patriotic corporations. Invoke “war,” and only the most necessary restrictions on democratic liberties will be ordered and accepted. Invoke “war,” and citizens spontaneously and naturally will together become warriors. Still, in a national crisis that should rely on coast-to-coast solidarity, the pandemic era discourse uncovers a fundamental contradiction in American culture, that between individualism and collectivism, from the conflict between individual states’ rights and responsibilities and federal rights and responsibilities, to the conflict between an individual person’s ostensibly inviolable right to bodily and psychic self-determination and the collective’s right to democratic processes and protections. (8)
Instead of a wartime collective solidarity to limit how many Americans were infected, hospitalized, and died or afflicted by Long Covid was much of the politically polarized populace’s refusal to take precautions, such as using masks, not gathering in large crowds, or becoming vaccinated once the vaccine was available. By the end of the first nine months of the coronavirus national emergency, nearly 351,000 people had perished from Covid; that number, three years since the pandemic began, now stands at 1.1 million.
The American war narrative has not only not developed a collective response to the virulent virus, it also seems to have deepened the partisan divide we are experiencing in this country. One might even ask whether the normalization of war rhetoric to address all manner of domestic crises led to the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol, when allegedly the Proud Boys served as “Trump’s army.”
So we should pay attention when words of war are used. For instance, on winning the chair of Colorado’s Republican party in March of 2023, Dave Williams said “Our party doesn’t have a brand problem. Our party has a problem with feckless leaders…We need a wartime leader.” Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post said of President Biden’s February 2023 primetime speech, “We are in a fight to save our democratic system, and it would have been wrong to pretend the battle is not both political and partisan.” In a subsequent interview, Robinson characterized the speech as a “wartime address.” Recently, the Covid Crisis Group issued their report, “Lessons from the Covid War.” It’s leader, historian Philip Zelikow, defends calling it a war:
It is best to think of COVID as a war, the most expansive global struggle since the Second World War. The U.S. fought the COVID war without an army or a battle plan. We met a 21st century global emergency with structures fundamentally designed for 19th century problems, and it showed. Our scientific knowledge was unsurpassed. Thousands of people and organizations made heartrending, life-saving efforts. Americans spent more public money on the crisis than anyone. Yet the U.S. suffered many more casualties than any other affluent country, despite having the best access to remarkable vaccines.
This normalization of war language has become even more deeply embedded in American education culture. In their June-July 2023 conference, the Moms For Liberty called themselves “Joyful Warriors” as they argue for a return to the “days of yore” in school curricula. And the former president of New College, Patricia Okker, cites the “militaristic rhetoric” used to characterize Governor Ron DeSantis’ January 2023 appointment of 6 conservative people to the college’s Board of Trustees:
Within minutes of the announcement, the press and even some of the new trustees were framing the development in the language of conquest. “We are now over the walls and ready to transform higher education from within,” trustee Christopher Rufo tweeted. Later that day, he announced his plan to visit New College with a “landing team.” There was talk of “recapturing higher education” and laying “siege.” By Monday, Rufo confirmed a charge leveled at him in The New York Times: “We are organizing a ‘hostile takeover’.”
Most notably, former-president and 2024 presidential candidate Trump continues to employ war language. It’s bad enough that with his two digital trading card collections he designates himself a superhero. But the war language he uses that evokes a cataclysmic end-of-times is threatening. He’d used similar language early in his presidency, threatening North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Most recently on the campaign trail, however, he has directed his combative linguistic assault at other Americans by characterizing his domestic challengers as “monsters,” himself as someone who will and can battle them, and employing Armageddon-like language. At the early-March 2023 annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), as in the 2020 pandemic year, Trump referred to himself as a “warrior.” What differs now, though, is his self-characterization as an avenger against domestic foes. “In 2016,” he claimed, “I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.” This sounds less like an advocate and more like a berserker.
Trump’s is war language, but language that does not even pretend to engender American solidarity. Instead, it promises violence, division, a personal notion of what is just, and vengeance against compatriots. While the war language here might be dismissed as hyperbole and showmanship, I think instead it indicates how permeated our culture is by war language and how violent militarism is normalized. It also demonstrates how, depending on their contexts, single words can tell complete but entirely variant stories.