“Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause” Julia Ward Howe.
Throughout history, the narrative of human progress has often been written in the ink of blood and the whispers of the bedchamber. This duality—the inclination toward carnage (the drive for conquest, dominance, and destruction) and the insistence on caress (the pursuit of intimacy, validation, and domestic possession)—defines a specific masculine paradigm that has governed global affairs for millennia. When these two impulses operate in a vacuum, devoid of the balancing influence of women’s voices, the result is a repetitive cycle of catastrophic wars and fragile, often coercive, relationships.
This insistence on carnage—extinguishing an entire population simply because they refused to submit—highlights a decision-making process rooted in ego and the preservation of power, prestige, and privilege. When war councils are exclusively male, there tends to be no voice to argue for the preservation of the social fabric or the long-term human cost. The result is the eventual exhaustion and collapse of civilization.
The “insistence of caresses” represents the private side of this masculine coin. In many historical contexts, the need for intimacy has been inextricably linked to a need for control. When the public sphere is defined by violence, the private sphere often becomes a sanctuary that the man seeks to dominate with the same fervor he applies to the battlefield.
In the masculine historical tradition, carnage is rarely viewed as a failure of diplomacy; rather, it is often framed as a proving ground for “virtue.” The drive for territorial expansion and the “glory” of the battlefield stems from a psychological need to exert external dominance. THIS is exactly what we are seeing in TrumpWorld. We did not suddenly or surprisingly arrive here. There is plenty of historical evidence we have managed to avoid or deny that might have helped us see this coming and pave a different path. World culture has been steeped in carnage and caresses since it’s beginning. Trump is simply the inevitable culmination of this culture.
In 400 BCE, Thucydides, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, describes the story of how the Athenians, driven by an unyielding need for hegemony, famously tell the weaker Melians:
“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe’s “carnage and caresses” quote came from her 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation, a passionate anti-war manifesto. It called on women to refuse to allow their husbands or sons to be trained for violence. She summarized perfectly men’s idea of a bargain: I’ll give you carnage, you give me caresses.
In 1900, Leo Tolstoy described a marriage fueled by a cyclical process between physical desire (the caress) and emotional retaliation (carnage). Tolstoy illustrates how, in a society where women lack a political and social voice, the relationship becomes a “civilized” form of carnage.
In 1940, Virginia Woolf linked the psychology of the “private house” to the psychology of the “dictator.” Woolf argued that the masculine habit of dominance in the home (insistence on the caress/submission) naturally translates into the habit of dominance in the state (carnage/war). She posits that:
- The exclusion of women from the “procession of sons” (professions and government) allows a specific brand of militarism to flourish.
- By bringing women’s voices—historically socialized toward preservation and “the art of living”—into the halls of power, the cycle of carnage can be broken.
Still, as recently as 2016, a study noted that only 11% of top business school case studies featured a female protagonist. When Harvard Business Review (HBR) was established in 1922, managers and contributors were almost exclusively men. Male authors have made up about 2/3 of journal articles since then. While female participation has increased significantly, the publication and management of CEO-focused content remains dominated by males.
History shows us that a world governed solely by the masculine impulse toward carnage and caress is a world of short-lived triumphs and long-lasting tragedies. The “inclination to carnage” builds empires that inevitably crumble under their own violence, while the “insistence on caresses” creates domestic structures built on inequality rather than genuine connection.
Women’s historical exclusion from war councils and legislative bodies has allowed the “carnage-caress” cycle to repeat unchecked. To move toward a sustainable future, the global community must embrace a leadership model that prioritizes preservation over conquest and consensual partnership over possession. Only then can we break the pendulum that has swung for centuries between the battlefield and the bitter embrace.
The most dangerous moment in history occurs when the need for carnage and the need for caress converge. This is often seen in the “Trojan Horse” of romanticized nationalism—where men go to war ostensibly to “protect” the domestic sphere while simultaneously destroying the domestic spheres of others, e.g., TrumpWorld 2026.
In 2018, Jill Lepore, a professor of American history at Harvard University and a staff writer at the The New Yorker, published These Truths – A History of the United States. The book ended as Trump was beginning his first term. It is as good an example of honest history as you will ever find. She recently wrote an edited version describing the Trump administration.
I have long admired Lepore’s writing, scholarship, and perspective. She is not only one of the most prolific writers I have ever known; she is also one of the most substantive.
On May 12, 2026, she wrote an article in the New Yorker describing her angst at writing the Trump chapter before our 250th anniversary. She acknowledged how hard it is to write history when you are in the middle of a fire. She would much prefer to write with a little more distance on the subject and with a lot less smoke. In the last chapter, Lepore describes the carnage of the Trump administration. Fortunately, she left out all the “caresses” this evil man has forced on women over his entire history. Perhaps the Epstein files will shed more light on that subject even though court documents provide plenty of evidence. At a minimum, read the New Yorker article.
In his two terms, Trump has laid carnage not only to history but also to people’s lives. His policies have caused or will cause millions of deaths through the elimination of humanitarian aid, reductions in health care, and endless wars. I could go on and on, but you can read about all that in Lepore’s updated edition of These Truths.
The point of this post is not to trash Trump once again, but to suggest that he is just one more example of what happens when men are in charge with no check on their egos or eros—when there is no voice advocating for diplomacy and human life. I wish people would turn more from HBR to HCR (Heather Cox Richardson).
I’m hoping that the culture of carnage and caresses may someday be relegated to the dustbins of history and a 22nd-century scholar will be able to look back with dispassionate objectivity to describe the depraved obsessions of the past. May it be so.
