War is the Health of the State
In the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t watch last night’s address on Afghanistan. Chalk it up to Trump Fatigue or perhaps post solar eclipse reflection. Whatever the case, I didn’t watch the Great Pumpkin step out of the pumpkin patch to address our troops. But from reading accounts today I gather that he’s calling for a troop increase; of course, as is his won’t he was vague on the specifics.
Also in typical Trump fashion, this latest iteration of Afghan strategy is a reversal of statements he made back when he was a private citizen. But at this point, such mendacity is to be expected. I mean, you’d have to be awfully naïve at this point to believe that this aged leopard can change his (liver) spots, right?
Cue Washington Post White House Bureau Chief Phillip Rucker:
Oh dear. Someone fell for the old “Trump read from a teleprompter so now he sounds presidential” trick again. As if we hadn’t learned by now that there’s a marked difference between Teleprompter Trump and the one who oozes forth during unguarded, unscripted moments like Edgar the Bug from Men in Black. This is a guy who once claimed on the campaign trail that sounding presidential was as easy as affecting a more serious-sounding tone. Even a trained chimp like Trump can fake respectability for a time before he reverts to flinging shit around his cage.
Many rightly pilloried Rucker online for his acquiescent tweet, so clearly a great number of people aren’t falling for the ol’ okey-doke. But the fact that a member of the White House press corps can be so willfully naïve is troubling because it suggests that his coverage of this president’s war strategy may be rosy-colored rather than clear-eyed.
But I don’t mean to single out Rucker for abuse. Indeed, much of the media went gaga when Trump ordered an air strike on Syria several months back. Some, like CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, saw the move as “Presidential” while MSNBC’s Brian Williams was so awed by the spectacle that he felt moved to quote Leonard Cohen lyrics. For as much as Trump derides the so-called “fake news” media, he knows what a lot of presidents have known over the years: the best way to mobilize the press and public behind you is to wage, or in this case prolong, a war. It’s the surest way for a president to galvanize support, particularly in times of crisis — and this is most assuredly a president in crisis. Or crises, as the case may be.
Perhaps no one in our country’s modern history wrote better about this phenomenon than writer and social critic Randolph Bourne. Before dying of Spanish flu at the age of 32 in 1918, Bourne wrote an unfinished essay entitled “The State.” In it, Bourne penned perhaps his most famous maxim: “War is the health of the state.” At the risk of simplifying a complex argument (which should be read to be fully appreciated), Bourne argued that in times of peace people interact with their society and their Government and only occasionally with the State; in times of war, however, the paradigm is reversed and the State takes precedence. War encourages individuals to join “the herd” that is effectively mobilized by the State to join the war effort in the name of ephemeral notions like patriotism.
I wonder what Bourne, if he were with us today, would have to say about tweets like Rucker. To be sure, having an anti-war critic as fierce as he would be a welcome antidote to the hawkishness found throughout our media landscape. But something tells me he’d have an even greater problem with the compliant types like Rucker who just can’t seem to — or choose not to — learn from the past no matter how often the same mistakes get repeated.
