In June 2007, we were having a typical day at Sather Air Base,
adjacent to Baghdad International Airport. I was a computer support technician
in charge of tracking the distribution of computer equipment across the base –
a bean counter, really. In the late afternoon, a volley of rockets hit our
base. This wasn’t the first rocket attack on our base, and it wouldn’t be the
last. However, this one stuck out because of two words which came over the
radio: “Man down.”
In previous attacks, the enemy would fire a few rockets at
the base, kick up some dust, make a lot of noise, but they had never actually
hit anyone or anything before. On this day, two airmen who were out having a
cigarette were in the path of one of the rockets. They took a lot of shrapnel
from the blast (these were tank-busting rockets, albeit WWII-era technology). Thankfully,
we had some world-class trauma surgeons on site who were able to save their
lives and get them stabilized enough to transport them to a better medical
facility.
After we were given the “all clear,” a group of us went to
visit the site of the explosion. Soaked into the sand was a pool of blood about
ten feet long by five feet wide, at least best as I can remember. I tried to go
and eat after that, but I couldn’t, so I just went to bed.
I’m typically hesitant to share that story. For one, it isn’t
a particularly pleasant memory. For another, I was a support troop. Many troops
had much more horrifying experiences outside the wire: fire fights, road side
bombs, clearing houses, the works. I don’t like to seem like I’m comparing my
experience to theirs. A lot of guys didn’t make it back, and those guys had
friends and colleagues who watched them die.
The reason I chose to share this story is because of an
article I saw on Slate,
written by Christina Cauterucci, about the “trauma” of the 2016 presidential
election and some of the people who had their favorite restaurants ruined for
them because they associate it with Trump’s victory. A sample:
I’m not alone in this. While Trump
fans might cherish the MAGA hats they wore to 2016’s election watch parties, a
friend of mine went so far as to throw out the outfit she was wearing the night
Trump was elected. My colleague Josh Keating had recently moved to a new
neighborhood as of Election Day 2016, and he and his wife were eating takeout
from a new-to-them Indian restaurant while they watched the results come in.
“We have never eaten there again,” he said. “Can’t separate that night from the
taste of mediocre saag paneer.” Brendan Leonard, a 34-year-old university
employee in New York City, used to love making a particular pulled pork recipe
in his crockpot. He was eating it over nachos when Trump won the election. “I
haven’t made it since and refuse to—at least until the results on Tuesday,” he
said. “I want to say that if the Dems take the House, I’ll be able to make
pulled pork again, but I’m still very anxious about the whole thing. Maybe if
the Dems take the House and Steve King loses, then I can return to making that
dish. Or maybe I’ll wait two more years.”
One might read this and think of it as a satire of extremely
privileged New York City liberals, akin to the famous Saturday Night Live
sketch with Dave Chapelle hanging out with his bougie white liberal friends
reacting with horror to the election returns. Alas, this is very real, and it’s
an example of something that has bothered me for a few years, now: a tendency
for left-leaning journalists and activists to appropriate the language of
trauma in self-serving ways to describe their feelings about politics.
In 2017, Teaching
and Teacher Education published a study about the trauma students experienced
in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. One teacher said, “I held
students as they sobbed in my arms. Many of my Hispanic students shared that
they were petrified and shook in terror. I comforted more students that day
than on September 11th.” Respectfully, if students are processing a
presidential election as a traumatic event, teachers would do well to ask what
role they had in making it traumatic. For an educator, a presidential election
is supposed to be a teaching opportunity, not a national tragedy. Instead, the
study proceeds to treat the election of Donald Trump as a traumatic event on
par with 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, and Pearl Harbor. Again, this was a
presidential election. They happen every four years as a matter of course. If children
are processing this as a traumatic event, that’s the fault of the adults in
their lives. Adults are supposed to reassure children, not stoke their fears.
The concept of “triggering” directly relates to events which
arouse memories associated with a traumatic event. Thanks to the misapplication
of it to describe something which makes people uncomfortable because it goes
against their worldview, however, people with PTSD can’t talk about things that
trigger them (in my case, loud noises and screaming children). The term that
they’re reaching for is, of course, “cognitive dissonance.” It’s a normal and
uncomfortable feeling people experience when processing new ideas which
challenge their previously held beliefs. However, by blanketing their cognitive
dissonance in the language of trauma, they not only shield themselves from
having to process new ideas, they imply that their discomfort is the fault of
people presenting new ideas.
In the case of Cauterucci and her colleagues, it’s a perfect
example of privileged liberals who’ve nestled themselves in a cocoon of
affirmation. Their only exposure to contrary ideas is the caricatured version
they invent in their imaginations. They never experience a persuasive argument against
their own beliefs, much less actual physical danger. Thus, when reality comes
crashing in for a moment and they realize that there are millions of Americans
who do not live or think as they do, the cognitive dissonance is so strong that
they process it as a traumatic event.
Unfortunately, I have to live in a world with screaming
children, so I have to learn to process these triggers without them ruining my
ability to function. So too do Cauterucci and her colleagues have to live in a
nation with millions of people who disagree with them on politics. I would
suggest that if their desire is to persuade people over to their side, it might
be useful for them to expose themselves a bit more to how the other side lives.
That’s what good journalists do.
However, I would ask in closing that they stop describing
their disappointment in the 2016 election results as trauma. Nowhere in the article
was there any hint of how the Trump presidency has impacted their lives the
past two years. That’s likely because it hasn’t. They follow politics with the
passion of a sports fan, but just like a sports fan, their day to day lives don’t
change if their team loses: they just get in a bad mood.
In short, I’d like left-leaning journalists who talk about
an election as a traumatic event in their lives to please check their privilege
on this. Your “trauma” was caused by extreme cognitive dissonance, not any
actual physical danger to your person.
