I was pleased to see that my letter on Princeton’s use of eminent domain to acquire Westminster Choir College was printed in the January 7 issue of Princeton’s Town Topics, with a note from the editor (p. 13): “Thank you for your letter. We stand corrected.” Good to hear it.

Whether the topic is genocide or eminent domain, mainstream American journalists have an addiction to euphemism about the use of force that should be corrected at every turn. If journalists described the use of force more vividly and accurately, people would grasp its ubiquity in public life, and stop being surprised when it took egregious forms, as in the killing of Renee Good.

Force pervades American life: there’s no reason to be surprised by it. In this case, Princeton Council pre-empted a property dispute over Westminster to take by force what it (and its constituents) felt entitled to take–a 23-acre choir college. They came, they saw, they condemned, they took. And why not? The takers, after all, stood to gain from their taking, and that’s all that matters to them and their enablers.

If you seek his monument, don’t look around

That sense of entitlement is habituated in American life. Once habituated, it eventually starts to normalize things like invasions, abductions, and military occupations. How else do we describe American actions in Venezuela? And how else do we describe the attitude of foreign policy experts who think that the main issue in play there is whether the invasion lowers the price of gas for Americans? The real expertise of the average “foreign policy expert” lies in the leveraging of opportunism, one reason why such expertise, otherwise so worthless, is so highly prized.

Sometimes, of course, reality breaks through and people finally perceive the dangers involved in the habit of euphemism about dangerous things, for instance, when some deranged brute shoots a pretty blonde lesbian in the face and kills her. Stories like that don’t begin at the moment of confrontation,  however. They begin farther back, with acts that legitimize the initiatory resort to force. Cover them up, and you render the world incomprehensible, which is the first step toward making it safe for brutality. Which is where we are.