Politics & Power Quote by Judy Biggert

That opening clause is a preemptive shield: by insisting no one promised “easy,” Biggert lowers the bar for discomfort, duration, and even failure. It’s a familiar post-9/11 move in American politics, designed to normalize the idea that hardship is not a bug of the “war against terrorism” but its permanent operating system. The audience is asked to accept complexity and sacrifice without being offered measurable endpoints.

The grammar does a lot of political work. “Fighting the war” and “defending our homeland” yokes an outward campaign to an inward duty, collapsing foreign policy into domestic protection. “Homeland,” a word that surged after 2001, carries a particular emotional freight: it frames security as intimate, almost familial, while implying that dissent is a kind of estrangement. The pivot to “So let’s support” translates policy into a loyalty test. Support is framed as a moral posture toward “troops” and “law enforcement workers,” not as scrutiny of strategy, legality, or efficacy.

Then comes the soft-focus finale: “our nation and our children.” Children are the argument-ending trump card, a rhetorical hostage that makes skepticism sound like negligence. The phrase “days and years to come” quietly smuggles in open-endedness, preparing the public for a long horizon of surveillance, funding, and expanded authority. The intent isn’t merely reassurance; it’s consent-building. The subtext: the mission will be ongoing, the costs will rise, and the responsible citizen’s role is to endorse the institutions tasked with carrying it out.