Restoring the original and non-Orwellian name to the U.S. Department of War ought to have a positive impact on people’s speech and understanding.

Yes, of course, Trump did it in order to celebrate the sadistic malevolence associated with the word “war.” He did it while pursuing horrific wars in Palestine and Ukraine, threatening (and beginning) wars on Venezuela and Iran, and moving massive resources from human and environmental needs into war preparations in the U.S. and its vassal NATO members. He immediately threatened to invade Chicago and show it the meaning of the newly restored name.

Yes, of course, 78 years of propaganda will not be undone quickly. All or most of the governments around the world that copied the U.S. in renaming their militaries “defense” will fervently resist switching back. Even peace activists relentlessly talk about “the Defense Department,” “the defense industry,” “defense contractors,” etc. If decades of passionate advocacy by some of us for not parroting the very propaganda we work against has had virtually no impact, it can be expected to take at least a few weeks before people flip their linguistic habits in obedience to a fascist buffoon.

But flipping those linguistic habits, for whatever reason, remains something that would benefit us all. Words shape our thinking as much as communicate it. We shouldn’t applaud Trump for dropping the pretense that wars are waged for something other than sadism, power, and profit, because he’s trying to normalize the glorification of sadism, power, and profit. But if those who oppose evil were to drop the pretense that the greatest evil in the world is “defensive” and “humanitarian,” we’d be much better off.

If Congress had to pass National War Authorization and Appropriations Acts instead of so-called Nation “Defense” Acts, it might suddenly be possible to nudge the gears in a Congressional head or three into motion. The U.S. Constitution allows Congress to raise and support armies for no longer than two years at a time. It does not envision the permanent Military Industrial Congressional “Intelligence” Media Academic Think Tank Complex. Endless massive, ever-growing War Authorization Acts could make Congress stop and notice the absence during the past 84 years of any Declaration of War, or of any moment in which the U.S. War Department was not at war, or of any war that could be said to have accomplished anything useful.

Trump believes that restoring the name “War Department” will restore an imaginary age in which the United States “won” wars — a powerful admission that for 78 years, the U.S. government has spent trillions of dollars killing millions of people, destroying societies, ripping down the rule of law, causing horrific and lasting environmental damage, fueling bigotry, restricting civil liberties, corroding culture, and depriving positive initiatives of resources that could have transformed the world for the better. But — in the words of Jeanette Rankin, who voted in the U.S. Congress against both of the “beautiful” world wars — you can no more win a war than a hurricane. The U.S. “won” imperialist and coalition wars in the days of the Department of War by committing genocidal slaughters of a sort deemed grotesquely unacceptable in the age leading up to the current livestreamed genocide in Gaza, and by allowing allies like the Soviet Union to do most of the killing and dying (rather like Ukrainians today) before producing countless Hollywood movies suggesting a different story.

Restoring the acceptability of genocides, carpet bombings, and nuclear bombings doesn’t flow inevitably from restoring the name of the institution responsible. If we choose, the unconscionable horror of such things can instead mean that admitting what the Pentagon is, and stamping that disgusting, barbarous title over its front door could allow the development of a significant anti-war contingent in the United States. Such a contingent should not be simply anti-Trump. We should not be bothered by what he calls the war machine, but by the war machine itself — even when the name change is resisted or reversed.

One way to help this along would be to conscientiously remove from our speech and our thoughts, not just “defense” but all variety of insidious war propaganda terms. We might try also giving honest names to every governmental department. We might consider alternatives to war, and the case for war abolition.

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