Finally Back...and it feels good!!

I have been gone for what seems like forever!! But it feels good to be back and engaged again. I want to comment a little on a fascinating, enlightening, and very persuasive article I read by Carol Cohn entitled "Slick-ems, Glick-ems, Christmas Trees, and Cookie Cutters: Nuclear Language and How We Learned To Pat The Bomb."

In the article she basically spent a lot of time hanging around nuclear defense intellectuals studying nuclear strategic analysis. Her article begs the question as to whether or not she overestimates the influence exerted by intellectuals by asserting how their professional language sets the terms for public debate and whether or not such technical language usually becomes public only when it is subsumed within the broader discourse of conventional language.

Maybe I was influenced by Cohn's many references to Alice In Wonderland, but she had me sold in the affirmative. The use of what she calls "technostrategic" language by the defense intellectuals does an amazing job of disassociating them from the reality and destructive capabilities of the weaponry.

Using "technical" terms like "collateral damage" and "counter value attacks" has a stoic value to it that does not bring to mind the horrible and nightmarish images of unimaginable carnage that the use of these weapons can inflict upon a community of human beings.

I read a book a few years ago, aptly titled, Hiroshima, written by survivors of that massacre. One image that sticks in my mind is when a young doctor is quoted as saying how he tried to pull people out of a near-by river, but could not because their skin was literally falling off in his hands. This encounter was written as graphically and with as much articulation as one could have possibly used to try to make the readers understand the horrific happenings of that day...but still, I can not possibly fathom what a scene like that would be like. Imagine then, how using these "technostrategic" terms so flippantly can espouse such a nonchalant attitude about the use of these weapons. If one cannot possibly imagine the horrors of the use of these weapons when put into the most graphic of terms, how can one possibly be able to fully understand the repercussions of their use when put into "technostrategic" terms...which is precisely the point.

I think that whoever the "hawks" may be at the time mean for this technical language to become public and subsumed within the broader discourse of conventional language. The more terms like "nuclear holocaust" and the like are used, the less real and scary they become.

Cohn goes on to make an excellent point in that to be engaged in the discourse, one must use this technical language-not doing so would make the debater seem uneducated and naive. No matter how well one might word their argument, to use actual English instead of the expert jargon, immediately makes one seem ignorant and simple-minded. Obviously in order to engage in the discourse, one must co-opt the technical language, but the pitfall in doing so is to immediately take the reality out of the conversation. It really becomes a kind of "damned if you do-damned if you don't" situation.

Although Cohn offers no solutions at all to this delema, it was an interresting article to say the least, and I certainly will be more conscious of the words that I use.