Making 'War' on 'War,' Part 2 (WisCon 32 panel)

"Making 'War' on 'War' Part 2" was intended to be a continuation of the very successful and interesting panel last year, on trying to replace war language as America's dominant metaphor. Audience attendance was disappointing, which may well have been due to the mislabeling of the time slot in the pocket program grid and the doorside rosters. Georgie Schnobrich as moderator worked hard to keep the energy level up, and Shweta Narayan provided a very useful matrix showing linguistic breakdown of connotation in war language (showing, for example, why it is propagandically preferable to have a "war on" something instead of a "war with" something). Sylvia Kelso provided some contrarian analysis, but possibly the best idea of the panel came from Ian Hagemann, with an economic "scarcity" examination of war goals which should be rigorously applied to all appeals to go to 'war' of any sort. A very good, thoughtful panel, and a pity more people did not get to it.