Just today, Walter Einenkel posted a diary telling us of Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and his incendiary remarks in support of fellow Senator Tommy Tuberville’s extortion of the armed forces. Tuberville has been holding up military promotions in his pursuit of forcing the armed forces to rescind its policy of maintaining readiness, which includes supporting female units who may need transportation or other resources to repair on the way or after reproduction options (e.g., abortion).
Tuberville, in his capacity, has been holding up the filling of key positions in the armed forces in a lark to have this policy overturned. He’s using his official position to squat, senatorially, on military promotions, in regard to an assault on the rights of personnel.
Mike Lee has come out in support of this extreme tactic, this thumb-breaking, saying, “When Pentagon leaders stop fighting / America’s enemies // And instead fight Americans // Waging war on American babies // It’s time to cut Pentagon funding”.
As I noted in the comment section of Walter’s diary, this isn't about what Lee is saying. This is about what Lee is communicating. He’s speaking to a very small segment of the population, and they hear him loud and clear. To us, he makes no sense, but to them he—in their minds—has the clarity of speaking truth to power.
Robert J. Lifton called this loading the language. Here we have several words that have already been transformed in other times and places. (I call this keywording.)
So fetus has already been transformed into a full-sized, fully developed baby. We’ve seen that over the years—now it’s just a 1:1 relationship. So any abortion is an attack on living babies. That’s that equation.
Next, we have the word “war”, which somewhat evokes the war on drugs and the war on crime. But it really derives full context because we're talking about the military. War is an entirely appropriate word to use in a military context—but it's wholly inappropriate in this context, because the withholding of funds or personnel is entirely a misappropriation of context to begin with. Tuberville is fully in the wrong to associate military readiness with this pet issue. But because Tuberville has placed abortion into the context, Lee can then freewheel with this rhetorical riff.
Thus we have “war on American babies.” Just a nonsense phrase on the face of it. But to the people listening to him, this makes perfect sense and, in a way, is a culmination of the very use of the inside-outing of language that the anti-abortionists used in the first place. We don’t have a battalion slaughtering infants in the streets—that's not a thing; that's never going to be a thing. But the people to whom Lee is speaking can envision it in their minds, and they've been told for decades that no issue is larger than saving the lives of innocent babies (especially in the womb, where I guess they’re fish in a barrel).
The language evokes a picture and demands a moral response. It doesn't matter that the response is disproportionate, that it's outlandish, that it endangers our actual national security, which usually is the number one value for extreme conservatives. This one issue has been keyworded so that it can supersede all other concerns if it’s worded correctly.
This is something that Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers, explained:
(~15:19) Recently, I found myself at a small church in rural North Carolina with dozens of evangelical pastors from the area…. So I walked into this church with a friend … and we could tell immediately that this was not a politically neutral affair. Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who spoke at the event, said, “I believe this last election, 2016, was the result of prayer. We’ve seen our nation begin to move back to a nation that respects the sanctity of life.” So what he was signaling here is that the single issue that matters most, that pastors should care about, is abortion. They know that if you can get people to vote on a single issue, you can control their vote.
(~18:18) I want to tell you something about the political messaging of the movement leaders when they’re talking to congregations, are talking to pastors about talking to congregants. It’s all abortion all the time. In fact, I heard at one event a leader telling a group of pastors, “If someone asks you about the minimum wage, you ask them, ‘What’s more important, a few extra dollars or life?’” I mean, when you put it that way, you know, there’s sort of—it’s a leading question.
(~1:00:23) They know—the leaders of the movement—if you can get people to vote on a single issue, with a single binary life-or-death issue, you can control their vote.
(~1:05:08) And, at long last, they kind of have created what appears now like a sort of pro-life religion. It’s almost as though they’ve reduced all of politics to religion, to the question of religion—to their religion—and then all of religion to the question of abortion.
And then, you know, it kind of ties in with the sacrificing of babies in the brand-new blood libel that the fringe has swallowed whole as belief. So the phrase "war on babies” has real resonance for the people Lee is targeting.
Tuberville’s position has real teeth, and he’s doing real damage. Lee’s comments, while at the same time giving cover to Tuberville’s extremism, also signal further extremism to those in the audience, the ones who have ears to hear.