Trump is rewriting more than just the rulebook
Trump didn’t just rebrand the Pentagon. He dragged it out of the euphemism aisle and slapped on a new “sell-by” sticker.
Once upon a time, specifically 1789 for those keeping score, the United States had a Department of War, and they were just fine with that. The early Republic told its citizens: “This is the Department where we plan wars, and which shall henceforth be known as the department of such.” There was even a Secretary of War, because they didn’t feel uncomfortable putting the English language to use.
Back then, the Department of War took on anything that smelled like cannons. This included the Army, Indian Affairs, coastal forts and pretty much any other job description that sounded too exciting for the Post Office.
Fast-forward to 1947, the year Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which briefly saw the War Department merge the departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force into a bureaucratic monstrosity known as the National Military Establishment. The government must’ve realized that the acronym of their new National Military Establishment (NME) sounded a whole lot like “enemy.” By 1949, Congress had rebranded it with something snappier: the Department of Defense.
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