"War is an abstraction"
About this Quote
“War is an abstraction” lands like an accusation disguised as a definition. Coming from a public servant, it reads less like philosophical musing and more like an indictment of how institutions metabolize violence: turn it into policy language, metrics, and briefings until the blood disappears. “Abstraction” isn’t neutral here. It’s the bureaucratic solvent that strips war of faces, names, and consequences, leaving behind something clean enough to circulate in memos and speeches.
The intent is surgical: to expose the gap between those who authorize war and those who endure it. Abstraction is how distant decision-makers protect themselves - emotionally, politically, even morally. You can “escalate” a conflict the way you scale a program. You can “degrade capabilities” without picturing the apartment building. The phrase points to the euphemism engine that makes war administrable. If war stays concrete, it becomes harder to sell, harder to sustain, harder to excuse.
The subtext also carries a warning: abstraction doesn’t just misrepresent reality; it manufactures consent. When war is discussed as strategy, optics, and “national interest,” the public is invited to relate to it as spectators, not stakeholders. It becomes a story about maps and outcomes instead of trauma and aftermath.
Context matters because public servants live at the seam between human cost and institutional language. Jackson’s line suggests a crisis of translation: the state speaks in abstractions because that’s how it functions, but democracy frays when citizens are asked to sign off on violence without being allowed - or made - to feel its weight.
The intent is surgical: to expose the gap between those who authorize war and those who endure it. Abstraction is how distant decision-makers protect themselves - emotionally, politically, even morally. You can “escalate” a conflict the way you scale a program. You can “degrade capabilities” without picturing the apartment building. The phrase points to the euphemism engine that makes war administrable. If war stays concrete, it becomes harder to sell, harder to sustain, harder to excuse.
The subtext also carries a warning: abstraction doesn’t just misrepresent reality; it manufactures consent. When war is discussed as strategy, optics, and “national interest,” the public is invited to relate to it as spectators, not stakeholders. It becomes a story about maps and outcomes instead of trauma and aftermath.
Context matters because public servants live at the seam between human cost and institutional language. Jackson’s line suggests a crisis of translation: the state speaks in abstractions because that’s how it functions, but democracy frays when citizens are asked to sign off on violence without being allowed - or made - to feel its weight.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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