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September 20

Battle of Bastogne

In a recent interview with The New Statesman, Chomsky said, regarding the contingency that the president refuses to leave office and gathers paramilitary forces around him, "The military has a duty in that case, the 82nd Airborne Division, to remove him by force." Over at the Humanities section I asked why specifically the 82nd Airborne Division was supposedly saddled with this task. One response supposed this was a synecdoche or similar figure of speech, like "the Battle of Bastogne". Is "the Battle of Bastogne" known for being used metonymically? And does it appear plausible that Chomsky's reference to the 82nd Airborne Division is a figure of speech? --Lambiam 19:05, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you ask me, this is more of a reference to the 82nd Airborne Division's designation by the Department of Defense to "respond to crisis contingencies anywhere in the world within 18 hours" (as is also quoted in the lead section of our own article here on wiki). It seems to me that Chomsky is emphasizing the need to respond very quickly to the crisis that Trump refusing to leave office would bring. bibliomaniac 1 5 19:52, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This might have been a mistake on Chomsky's part. It was the 101st Airborne, not 82nd, who were of importance during Bastogne. Loafiewa (talk) 23:04, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, that was my mistake in replying to Lambian confusing the units. I suggested that using an exemplar such as "8nd Airborne" as a stand-in for "the military" for sake of emphasis could be a figure of speech similar to synecdoche. fiveby(zero) 00:46, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, a quick Google finds that Bastogne can be used as a simile for a noisy or destructive weather event: "An ice storm made our backyard sound like the battle of Bastogne" [1], "Prien Lake Park Area looks like the battle of Bastogne", [2] and "Had thunderstorms today, sounded like the Battle of Bastogne" [3]. Not sure what the British equivalent might be, but I did find one headline comparing the aftermath of a hurricane in the Bahamas to the Battle of the Somme [4] and the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests as "like the Battle of El Alemein" [5]. Alansplodge (talk) 16:40, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]