Reality vs. Rhetoric

Back a few decades, at the start of my second year as a Teaching Assistant in English, we were given a new course of instruction to follow. Instead of teaching "English Composition" we were to present "Rhetoric." The idea being, I think now, that a knowledge of rhetorical strategies would better equip our freshman readers with the tools to understand the difference between what somebody said and what was real. This was at the precise time that UC was under fire. New Governor, ex-second-billing actor Reagan had just fired Chancellor Clark Kerr in retaliation for the Free Speech Movements disruptions a couple of years before.

I don't think the curriculum change had anything to do with the political shift. And I certainly don't think our muddled approach to Rhetoric was was any more effective in raising political consciousness than what we had been doing -- reading, discussing and writing about the books that in various ways tried to explore what was both true and human.

At the same time, in the past few years I've used what I learned about rhetoric those many years ago to help understand one of the most vexing issues for progressives -- why have conservatives, over most the last 30 years, "owned" the political debate?

A few years ago, my friend Nick Hanauer had turned me onto the work of George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist and author of numerous books. many focused on the issue of language as apolitical tool, and on the values that are represented, sometimes subtly, focused on some key words and constructs. His term (used by many) was "framing." He exhorted those on the left not simply to harrumph and argue about these terms, but to find ways to reframe the argument. In other words, it's all about rhetoric as key to controlling reality.

At that point (2007), Nick, was trying to find ways for non-rightists to amend the framing of the political reality, was finishing co-writing and publishing "The True Patriot." The book draws quotes from key Americans, and intersperses them with an argument that neither the right nor left owns "patriotism." The book, in other words seeks to "reframe" the idea, the word in terms other than how the right was using it.

Also in my mind: in October of 2004 a writer in the NY Times, Ron Suskind, quoted a white House aide:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."^[link]

In other words, again, Rhetoric trumps Reality. A sophistic talent for rhetoric is certainly a valuable tool in acquiring power (vide Shakespeare's Richard III, or Marc Antony in "Julius Caeser") or moving multitudes (Prince Hal in Henry V), but often it is a tool clever people can use to avoid really thinking about something and to make appeals to emotion and fear. (FWIW, there was much speculation that the "aide" was actually Karl Rove himself.)

And if power is your highest goal, I suppose you'd be a fool not to use rhetoric to destroy an inconvenient truth.

Until it doesn't work any more.

It may be possible that we are seeing that tipping point now. No matter how loud the voices of Tea Baggers, Birthers or Death Panelists, they are not creating any kind of mass movement, other than a vague unsease, if not outright disgust for the whole process and all the actors. We've been hearing the same scary claims, rhetoric if you will, since the '80s. There's a solid line that connects Lee Atwater (deceased) to Roger Ailes (Fox News) to Karl Rove. With Rove in sole control the right is in disarray. His key strategy has been ... to label the congressional health care debate "Obamacare" (there's framing for you) and to make claims that don't even survive half of the first news cycle. You can smell the desparation.

I'm all in favor of change, but the cold reality is that most people will resist making a decision about change until they are convinced things are so bad that any decision is better than the status quo. As weird as it seems right now I think we're still a way from any tipping point. And I think Obama does, too. But that's the thing about tipping points.

And if at some later stage we get to the point (after going through a little hell) that we are better at seeing the reality behind or beyond the rhetoric, that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?