Freedom Spoken, Violence Practiced: Coercion, War, and the Normalization of Harm in the United States

Authored and published by Autumn Marshall (Founder & CEO, The Conjuring Mystic Ltd.)© 2026 Autumn Marshall. This essay examines the structural contradiction at the core of the United States: a nation that publicly proclaims freedom, liberty, and justice while sustaining itself through coercive war, economic violence, and the systematic devaluation of civilian life. Drawing on the author’s prior published work and historical evidence from the Vietnam War draft and contemporary conflicts, including Gaza and Venezuela, the paper argues that American violence is not exceptional but patterned and structural. Using autoethnography and remembrance as scholarly methodology, the essay demonstrates that the endurance of this system depends not only on physical force but on psychological conditioning that normalizes violence, reframes coercion as duty, and renders harm inevitable. The essay concludes that ethical clarity requires rejecting militarized mythologies and naming harm without euphemism.