I think there was an explicit conversation and a behind the scenes sort of structure driving this, right? I mean, think about the discourse post 9-11. They are trying to destroy our way of life. That language was there too, right? And one can see a thread from that to today, where that gets more and more articulated in relation not to the US, the hour, but a subset of the US that is the real America, right? Now then again, there are all sorts of reasons for that, economic reasons for wars, people's own experiences having gone off to war. But of course, there is fallout.
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. How the civil-military divide makes troops into super citizens and what it means that agents of state violence are turning to the grammar of identity politics—and more. The second in a two-part interview.
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