Greg Grandin: In 1971, the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger identified a “semantic collapse” brought about by relentless militarism, a moral, intellectual, and financial corruption that severs words from their meanings and unmoors ethics from their foundation. Starting with the “Indochina War,” Americans “found themselves systematically staving off reality by allowing a horrid military-bureaucratic patois to protect our sensibilities from the ghastly things we were doing,” sterilizing “the frightful reality of napalm and My Lai.” In turn, Watergate, which itself was prompted by Vietnam, led to the “utter debasement of language,” a further corrosion of meanings and institutions central for democratic governance. Today, in all the many forensic think pieces dissecting the presidential election and Trump’s victory—the vast majority of which focus on debates over class and race, or the formation and unraveling of domestic coalitions—only a few observers pay much attention to our endless wars. I think, though, that the “semantic collapse” Schlesinger identified continues. Many good people have tried, but there has been no reconstruction of meaning, no stemming the corrosion that relentless, grinding warfare has on morals. More here.