Much of the language of the woke Left implicitly borrows from the authority of historical suffering or from the authority of psychology or sociology. Identity politics, after all, is nothing but an argument from authority. (“As a …”)
And nobody has quite the moral authority in American life that veterans do. Which, sadly or at least annoyingly, is why the service and sacrifice of veterans is used so often and to such effect by so many Chevrolet Silverado and political campaign ads. Oddly enough, the woke folk, in between decrying the martial virtues and deeming America imperialist, use that authority too. Perhaps the favorite rhetorical device of that set today is to cry “trauma” at the drop of a culturally appropriated hat.
The most shameful and stupid feature in these appeals to trauma is that they contain a note of stealing from the valor of veterans. The power of claiming to be “traumatized” or of the now-mocked-out-of-fashion “triggered” is that it evokes the psychopathology of post-traumatic stress disorder, something about which there was a major public awareness campaign in the last decade, specifically because American soldiers were returning from wars with it. That’s not to say PTSD is something that can only be brought on by combat, nor that it’s new.
A few controversy cycles ago, the New York Post ran an image of the moment the second plane struck the World Trade Center to rebuke Minnesota’s Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s supposedly offensive downplaying of 9/11. I personally found Omar’s words, in context, anodyne. Her congressional ally Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., called the image “incredibly upsetting and triggering for New Yorkers that were actually there.” This is, of course, complete nonsense, and everyone knew it. I and the rest of the country watched the footage of those strikes probably thousands of times, glued to my TV for weeks after as the jet fuel smell began to waft through my living room uptown. The image is upsetting, not triggering. But just saying that is never enough now, not in these histrionic times. Never mind that this actually does harm to the seriousness with which real psychological trauma is taken in our culture. Never mind that actual psychiatric care for sufferers of PTSD proposes nothing like what the Left asks for us to do about “traumatic” content. Never mind that real triggers are often nonintuitive and indirect reminders of original traumas, not direct ones.
[Related: Omar defends Palestinians after rockets rain down on Israel]
Claiming trauma in frivolous cases is, then, a sort of rhetorical blackmail. You don’t want to stigmatize or cast doubt on the legitimacy of what the veterans have been through, do you? Now, if that means a college student claims seeing something disagreeable is a mental health emergency or that the Post should censor itself from publishing an image every New Yorker is familiar with — if, generally, it means that those among us who are unscrupulous about pretending to be hurt or offended to reap rewards can control the bounds of conversation by fiat, well, so be it. Thank you for your service.
