We Have Always Been At War With East Asia
Listening to Garry Wills talk with Terry Gross about his new book Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State, it occurred to me how quaint the words “mobilize” and “demobilize” have come to sound—dusty, steam-powered, telegraphed to generals on horseback from pre-autobahn Berlin and Paris before the first Coco cut the first little black dress. Quaint because here in the U.S. we have never truly demobilized from World War Two (the National Guard is called up, but the security apparatus never stands down). This is of course not news, and as Wills says, it’s largely a settled affair. It still unnerves me to see it reflected in our language.
