Homelands

Eugene Robinson has a good op-ed in WaPo (I almost called it a post, demostrating the blog-borg's takeover of my mind...) about the word "homeland" as applied to America, which has driven me crazy ever since 9/11 :

There was a time, not so long ago, when no one ever spoke of an American "homeland." During World War II there was a home front, and of course there has always been a heartland between the two heartless coasts, but no one thought of our big-shouldered cities, traffic-choked suburbs, purple mountains' majesties and amber waves of grain as anything called a homeland.

The United States was always a place for people who had left their homelands behind, a polyglot, rainbow-colored nation whose defining characteristics were vitality, mobility, dynamism and the restless urge to push toward the next frontier. But now we inhabit an official homeland, with an official Department of Homeland Security to protect it.

He does not think the choice of the word was deliberate, however:

The word homeland is a vivid but relatively inconsequential example -- less a distortion than an infelicitous choice that makes us sound as if we had quaint harvest rituals and a colorful national costume. It strikes an odd note, with its vague connotations of ethnic solidarity and ancient nationalism, and it gives off more than a whiff of us-vs.-them. This nation does have enemies from whom we need vigilant protection, but something more like "domestic security" would have done just fine, with less baggage.

Infelicitous my ass: the Administration have learned propaganda from the masters. They want to evoke us-vs.-them, ethnic solidarity, and ancient nationalism. How else do you get an unnecessary war on?