We have recently been told by the Trump administration that “improper ideologies” are taught in our schools, universities and cultural institutions.
Lately the Trump administration has taken interest in the exhibits and narratives at some of the nation’s premier museums. Notably, even the Smithsonian Institution has come in for criticism from MAGA dogmatists for going beyond “objective facts” with “distorted narratives driven by ideology rather than the truth.” In a word, they seem unhappy that the nation’s major historical blunders have become part of our shared history: events no longer sufficiently papered over by older and more sentimental narratives. Hence, we get lists of terms (above, collected by the New York Times) that agencies are discouraged from using. Actor Jack Nicholson’s Col. Nathan R. Jessep could have been talking to the MAGA faithful in the film A Few Good Men (1972) when he told other officers “You can’t handle the truth!”
The unspeakable horrors visited on native Americans, and the centuries long struggle of African Americans for freedom and a piece of the American dream are just two of the historical realities that have been traditionally finessed. Even with more grit in modern western films, we still warm to the favored manifest destiny in How the West was Won (1962) than narratives about the Sand Creek Massacre in eastern Colorado. A marker on the barren plains and a Wikipedia Post remain. But the murder of 750 native American men, women and children in 1864 is history that I never encountered as a student in Denver.
What do we do with atrocities committed in the name of a society we want to celebrate?
We have recently been told by the Trump administration that “improper ideologies” are taught in our schools, universities and cultural institutions, mostly meaning that new and less fantasized cultural sensitivities are now part of the curriculum. The awkward phrase reads like a line in Mao’s Little Red Book, or boilerplate lifted from an old Soviet training manual. Its use suggests a person or group reaching for good reasons where there are none.
Events can be affirmed or disputed, but ideologies cannot be fully grounded in empirical data. Each of us engages with aspects of ideological premises as we form our foundational beliefs to navigate the world. Ideologies are also not monolithic; they emerge from our unique political and social histories. Given the conventional usage of the term, can we truly label certain ideologies as “improper”? This notion is akin to accusing someone of possessing a “vivid imagination” or offering an “imprecise estimate.” In both cases, the initial adjective suggests—yet fails to provide—a definitive benchmark for assessment. We can manipulate language to mask the inherent contradictions between concepts, but ultimately, these distortions reflect an unfounded yearning for certainty. In authoritarian regimes such as Russia authorities can penalize the expression of “improper” ideas. Yet, ideas function as cognitive tools—they can embody thoughtful or dubious insights, but they should never be deemed “improper.”
Draconian sanctions against certain ideas are small-minded. It is disheartening to hear an American administration endorse this kind of rhetorical beast. Its sudden presence in our official rhetoric is unamerican and another reason to admire the built-in give and take in parliamentary systems that would expose “improper ideologies” as a semantic monstrosity.
We assume we are active and powerful because our language lets us imagine it.
Presidents easily muster fantasies of mastery and control. It is a habit to overestimate their abilities to manage events. My two over-the-top examples in this Hall of Fictions includes Donald Trump’s recent claims that destroyed Gaza along the Mediterranean can be turned into a vacation spot like the Riviera, and that Canada will be the 51st State. Trump always overpromises and then retreats. Even so . . .
Rhetoricians like to say that language has its way with us. The phrase is meant as a reminder that everyday language steers us to conclusions that usually promise more than we as individual agents or nations can deliver. Word choice can easily create perceptions that can make the unlikely more likely, the improbable possible, and a fantasy as an imagined outcome. Such is the nature of linguistic determinism. We can tie a wish to an action verb, and we are off and running, creating expectations for things that probably will not materialize. Who knew that simple verbs like “is” and “will” can be taken as fate, when they are more likely phantoms of deceit? Blame our overly-deterministic language.
Stephen Biddle and Jacob Shapiro indirectly made this point several years ago in The Atlantic when they noted that civil wars must usually “burn out” from the inside. A civil war such as Syria’s or Sudan’s might take years to wind down; an outcome outsiders can’t change very much.
Our verbs may sing their certainty, but forces we can’t predict are going to produce their own effects.
What seems inescapable is that committing ourselves to the control of complex political forces is too easy. That is something we’ve come to know all too well since the Vietnam era, reconfirmed more recently in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine. The military and social problems associated with nation-building are unforeseeable, giving us under-considered reasons to get lost in the neon glow of action verbs.
We construct the world as a web of causes and effects. It’s natural that we will place ourselves and our institutions in the driver’s seat. We assume we can be in charge because our language so easily lets us imagine it. Blame our overly-deterministic language, along with the hubris that comes with being a preeminent military power. Both set up tight effects loops that seem clear on the page but elusive in real life.
If we put individual culprits in a lineup they all look more or less innocent: verbs like affect, make, destroy, break, causes, starts, produce, alters, triggers, controls, contributes to, allows and so on.
In the right company these can be companionable terms. But let them loose within the rhetoric of a leader determined to make his or her mark and they can turn lethal. Fantasies of power and control impose more order on human affairs than naturally exists. They depend on verbs that flatter us by making us active agents, usually with all kinds of “unintended effects” we only discover later.
This sense of predictability is ironically aggravated by our devotion to the scientific method. As Psychologist Steven Pinker has observed, we can’t do science without buying into the view that we can identify first causes. That’s surely fine for discovering the origins of a troublesome human disease. But even though this logic is diffused through the culture, it cannot hold when we immerse ourselves in the infinite complexities of human conduct. Discovering the reasons and motivations of others is far more difficult. Add in entities such as nations, political parties and tribes, and first causes are often unknowable. And so strategic calculations based on efforts to influence or control events are bound to produce disappointment.
It’s a great paradox that we are easily outgunned by the stunningly capricious nature of human responses. Take it from someone who has spent a lifetime studying why people change their minds. We have models, theories, tons of experimental research and good guesses. But making predictions about any specific instance is almost always another case of reality crushing hope. We may be able to say what we want, giving eloquent expression to the goals we seek. And our verbs will predictably sing their certainty, but language is always going to produce its own surprises.
The unspeakable horrors visited on native Americans, and the centuries long struggle of African Americans for freedom and a piece of the American dream are just two of the historical realities that have been traditionally finessed. Even with more grit in modern western films, we still warm to the favored manifest destiny in How the West was Won (1962) than narratives about the Sand Creek Massacre in eastern Colorado. A marker on the barren plains and a Wikipedia Post remain. But the murder of 750 native American men, women and children in 1864 is history that I never encountered as a student in Denver.What do we do with atrocities committed in the name of a society we want to celebrate?
Presidents easily muster fantasies of mastery and control. It is a habit to overestimate their abilities to manage events. My two over-the-top examples in this Hall of Fictions includes Donald Trump’s recent claims that destroyed Gaza along the Mediterranean can be turned into a vacation spot like the Riviera, and that Canada will be the 51st State. Trump always overpromises and then retreats. Even so . . .