One thing that's remarkable about the #QueensSpeech, to American ears, is that, while she gracefully alludes to WWII, and even mentions her own 1940 children's broadcast, she does not use martial rhetoric to describe the pandemic. https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1246875266334539777

Contrast this with American leaders, who can have difficulty talking about *any* major national challenge without resorting to war-talk—and so of course they nowadays routinely talk about the pandemic with words like "enemy," "fighting," "attacking," "victory," "defeat."

War-talk is appropriate in wartime. And it can be rousing outside of wartime—when used sparingly. When overused, it can be empty and dry and dull.

Historically, there were times when the overuse of war-talk was a progressive tic ( @JonahDispatch has written in a few places about the "war on X" formulation) or perhaps proto-fascistic. It's my sense nowadays, though, that it's very common on both the left and right.

Is the overuse of war-talk a sign of laziness, or failed imagination, on the part of speakers and speechwriters?

Or will a vast, continental liberal democracy naturally struggle to find a unifying rhetoric of mission that is not about some external enemy? https://twitter.com/TBDculture/status/1242554324120678401

One last thing, to return to the #QueensSpeech: Younger viewers might not have noticed—but older viewers likely got a lump in their throats—by her concluding "we will meet again," a pitch-perfect allusion to this optimistic/fatalistic WWII hit: