“Weaponizing” Dialogue

When did reportage on politics adopt a sports analogy? Who knows, but we can see a visage of this approach at least 50 years ago:

Writing in 1968, Milton Rokeach, the social psychologist, articulated what would become a perennial complaint. “The kinds of data obtained by public-opinion research and disseminated in the mass media seem designed more to entertain than to inform,” he wrote. “The quality of the information conveyed seems not much different from that conveyed in the sports pages or, better yet, the daily racing form.” The press, especially during election years, frequently failed to exercise “journalistic conscience”; it had internalized a “racehorse philosophy.”

John Herrman, New York Times Magazine, 3/14/17

The Trump era personifies trends that have been steadily rising. Perhaps it has reached its apotheosis in “weaponizing” political dialogue. What does that mean for politicians, journalists, and citizens?

“Weaponization” works as a throwing up of the hands, and as a suggestion — or an admission, or a strategic claim — that the discourse has failed us. Or, more accurately, it suggests that the discourse has become something dangerous: no mere fight but a terminal conflict without decorum or limits. The language of sports had a maddening tendency to flatten and trivialize the serious consequences of politics, creating constant suspense but obscuring life-or-death stakes. Militarized language moves in a different direction: It intensifies the news it’s describing while simultaneously obscuring actual threats.

“Weaponization” is used to describe both rhetoric that might incite violence and criticism of violent rhetoric. It is lodged against the state, with its legal monopoly on violence, but also, incoherently, against those who challenge the state. It is a shortcut to false equivalence, and it manufactures excuses for those with a vested interest in drawing blood themselves.

The Political Uses of Concession Speeches

If you stay up late until all the votes are counted (just not in 2020) you can hear one of the classic (but sad) genres of political communication: the concession speech.

According to an story in NPR by Joe Richmond of Radio Diaries, you need four pieces to make the textbook speech, according to analysis by Paul Corcoran, a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia and a political theorist who studies U.S. presidential campaigns:

• The statement of defeat: Although they never use the word “defeat,” a candidate will acknowledge their opponent’s victory and congratulate them.
• The call to unite: In a show of bipartisanship, a candidate will express support for their former opponent and call for unity under their leadership.
• The celebration of democracy: The candidate reflects on the power of a democratic system and the millions of voters who participated in the election process.
• The vow to continue the fight: The loser speaks about the importance of the issues raised in the campaign and the policies their party stands for. They promise to continue fighting toward these goals and urge their supporters to do so as well.

Watch fifteen memorable ones, starting with Adelai Stevenson in 1952, “crowned “the most beautiful loser” by the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg.” He said,

“That which unites us as American citizens is far greater than that which divides us as political parties. I urge you all to give Gen. Eisenhower the support he will need to carry out the great tasks that lie before him. I pledge him mine. We vote as many. But we pray as one.” Via RDI

Trumpy Rhetoric

How should we understand President Trump’s mode of communication  in terms of effectiveness? Really, how does it work, giving him a lot of credit for disrupting the public sphere with bombast, attention, and large impact? The answers could shape American pubic discourse for a while. Perhaps the answers lie in a careful rhetorical analysis–going back to our foundational views of rhetoric.

A new book that shows why Trump’s discouse is a game-changer in the public square. A few tactics: “argument ad hominem, argument ad baculum, argument ad populum, reification, paralipsis, and more to reveal a campaign that was morally repugnant to some but to others a brilliant appeal to American exceptionalism.” (TAMU Press)

First stop for many is the concern that Trump channels unpleasantness. Shouldn’t that unqualify him? Not so fast, wrote David Denby back in 2015, trying to explain this phenom. “You can’t effectively say that Donald Trum is vulgar, sensational, and buffoonish when its exactly vulgar sensationalism and buffonery that his audience is buying.” He calls what President Trump does an “anti-rhetoric” that channels Alan King and standup acts to entertain through attacks, “an elaborate ficiton.”

In his University of Chicago class on political persuasion, Columnist Bret Stephens explained that Trump primarily seeks one rhetorical goal: “to debase.”

The purpose of Trump’s presidency is to debase, first by debasing the currency of speech. It’s why he refuses to hire reasonably competent speechwriters to craft reasonably competent speeches. It’s why his communication team has been filled by people like Dan Scavino and Stephanie Grisham and Sarah Sanders.

And it’s why Twitter is his preferred medium of communication. It is speech designed for provocations and put-downs; for making supporters feel smug; for making opponents seethe; for reducing national discourse to the level of grunts and counter-grunts.

That’s a level that suits Trump because it’s the level at which he excels. Anyone who studies Trump’s tweets carefully must come away impressed by the way he has mastered the demagogic arts. He doesn’t lead his base, as most politicians do. He personifies it. He speaks to his followers as if he were them. He cultivates their resentments, demonizes their opponents, validates their hatreds. He glorifies himself so they may bask in the reflection.

via NYT

A new book this month explores how Trump does this through his “dangerous rhetoric” according to Jennifer Mercieca of Texas A&M, that allows him to define the terms of debate and shape reality:

Trump has used six rhetorical strategies repeatedly since 2015. Three ingratiate Trump with his followers, and three alienate Trump and his followers from everyone else. The effect is to unify his followers against everyone else and to make Trump the fulcrum for all political discussion and debate. 

via “A field guide to Trump’s dangerous rhetoric” in The Conversation

Against the backdrop of the race crisis featuring a broadcast murder of George Floyd leading to widespread protests of police brutality and a larger discussion about racism, the former Sec Def Jim Mattis spoke out to press the point:

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”

And so it appears that President Trump draws on the classic Aristotelian tools of ethos, pathos, and a speaking style that is effective with his existing supporters, even while antagonizing opponents and driving others away.

via The Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg

Is Trump’s rhetoric smart politics embedded in a familiar, direct civic style for a socially-networked era, or as Caroline Mohan writes, an “unprecedented yet effective public rhetorical repertoire”? Or demagoguery as seen in how this matches up with authoritarian rhetoric, using “words as weapons” as Mercieca observes? November may tell us if this continues to work as well a second time around.

When a Teen Talks: Greta Thunberg on Climate at UNGA

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

“How dare you…”

Undoubtedly Greta Thunberg speaking at the UN General Assembly Climate Summit today was something new. It’s not new for teens (or “Youth” in diplomacy-speak) to address the austere body. In fact, various foras exist for young persons to speak on pressing global issues. But Thunberg’s tone–and specifically, the rhetorical tactic of her speech–are causing waves.

Was it an effective speech?

Her age does matter because it affords Thunberg a unique position in which to make her case for climate action–and to criticize her elders. As Robinson Meyers writes in The Atlantic on “Why Greta Wins”:

And this is the way to understand Thunberg that paints her as neither a saint nor a demon but that still captures her appeal. Thunberg epitomizes, in a person, the unique moral position of being a teenager. She can see the world through an “adult” moral lens, and so she knows that the world is a heartbreakingly flawed place. But unlike an actual adult, she bears almost no conscious blame for this dismal state. Thunberg seems to gesture at this when referring to herself as a “child,” which she does often in speeches.

When I spoke with her, I asked whether she felt this dual position: the burden of awareness mixed with the lack of blame. “Yes, definitely,” she said. “Because we are so young, our perspective on the world, our perception of the world is so—is so, like, blank. We don’t have that much experience. We don’t say, Oh, we cannot change this because it’s always been this way, which a lot of old people say. We definitely need that new perspective to see the world.”

Pure Rage

In what Umair Irfan references in Vox as a “rhetoric of international shame” Thunberg seems to speak based on science rather than emotional appeals–even as she uses emotion to deliver the message.

That she delivers her message with such direct, uninflected matter-of-factness is another aspect of her disarming rhetorical power. Unlike alarmist activist groups like Extinction Rebellion, she cannot be accused of hyperbolic license in her presentation of the state of the science — they say the U.N. understates the crisis; she takes its reports at face value. Unlike policy-makers like Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Bernie Sanders, and those working on Green New Deal legislation, she cannot be faulted for pushing “too fast,” however necessary change may be, because she is not advocating any particular policy at all, merely describing the problem as scientists do and showcasing the failure of leaders to do much, yet, about it — a failure anyone with eyes can plainly see. And unlike climate celebrities like Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, she cannot be attacked as a hypocrite, because she is already living an exemplary low-carbon life — abjuring plane travel, going vegan, denouncing consumerism.

David Wallace-Wells, New York Mag Intelligencer, “It’s Greta’s World.“

Build your Confidence in Public Speaking (Thanks, Geraldine)

Believe TIME Magazine when they say that Geraldine DeRuiter is worth reading. Much of it is “consistently clever” but she also reaches into travel, cupcakes, and intersectional feminism–all necessary things in the study of international affairs.

What about public speaking? As a rising star, author, and (so it seems) frequent sepeaker, DeRuiter has learned a few things. For most of us, fear of failure is an omnipresent part of speaking.

All of her suggestions are helpful, but numbers 7 and 8 really hone in on why failing (painfully, and in front of a group) can really be a good experience–and can help you improve as a public speaker.

Messing up will tell you what parts of your presentation need work. Odds are, there were parts of your presentation that you absolutely nailed – and some that you didn’t. The latter are clearly what needs work – so spend time fixing those spots. Correct that typo. Ruminate on those stats until you can express them in a clean, concise manner.

Charge through your mistakes like you know what you’re doing. I’ve watched a lot of people present over the years – professionals, celebrities, authors, amateurs. And the thing that separates the great speakers and the, um, less-than-great ones isn’t whether or not they make mistakes. It’s how they recover from them. The people who do a great job just slide over their errors, the way you would in casual conversation. It doesn’t throw them off, because they don’t let it. They’re just having a breezy chat with a group of several thousand people.

via  “How to Become a Better Public Speaker (When You’ve Just Bombed on Stage) the Everywhereist

Political Wordsmithing: The Art of Preserving Options

Photo via National Review podcasts, The Bookmonger, Episode 32: Barton Swaim.

One review of Barton Swaim’s book, The Speechwriter, called it a future “classic on political communication” due to its consideration of off-camera (informal) communication, as well as the high-sounding rhetoric we expect to hear.

In crafting and selling policy in an organization or multi-party setting, leaders must walk a line between offering insight and substance and pinning themselves down with specifics. Going too far in either direction creates problems. In the WaPo review, Carlos Lozada writes:

The nature of politics is to subtract meaning from language, Swaim understands, but he develops a relatively benign philosophy about political speech: “Using vague, slippery or just meaningless language is not the same as lying: it’s not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you’re saying something instead of nothing.” And politicians resort to such devices not out of deviousness but simply because every day they must weigh in “on things of which they have little or no reliable knowledge or about which they just don’t care.”

Take that, George Orwell.

via “What it’s like to write speeches for a rude, rambling and disgraced politician.” WaPo

Holly’s Diplomacy Advice for Players at Utah Legislature

In case you wondered, Holly Richardson (aka Holly on the Hill) is ever-insightful–a true Utah leader and verifiable promoter of the public interest. Also, she’s an effective communicator worth following whose many accomplishments in business, politics, journalism, and in her own family are all readily accessible.  Check out her TED talk to hear about her life goal to be a mother–and her global efforts to adopt and serve children–including her own 25 children.

Whether you are new to the Utah Legislature–or working to prepare for your own negotiation, take a look at her expert advice in SLTrib. A few highlights:

• “Prepare to be overwhelmed” so stay hydrated and healthy.
• Hard work is essential, so figure out how to keep going because stamina is rewarded.
• “Remember junior high? Yeah, its like that.” You’ll need to discern between real friends and others playing politics.
• “You may have the most brilliant bill idea ever conceived but you cannot get it passed by yourself.” Make friends and build coalitions if you want to get stuff done.
• Ask questions and learn from others. “Don’t be afraid” to not know the answer.
• “Develop a thick skin” and be ready for criticism and harsh words (just in case.)

How to Argue

I’m a big fan of constructive arguments. Good writing is based on them. (So is good politics.) Even if we don’t change minds–there is something essential in the back-and-forth involved in a sharing of different views.   Or is there?

I’m interested in three main questions relating to this topic:

• How do we stay informed about issues, ideas, and what’s going on in the world?
• Is it possible to learn something through debates and direct disagreement?
• What communication and interpersonal skills are needed to disagree more productively?

Consider  Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics, in an interview with Krista Tippets’ On Being podcast. His response to her question about how he reads the newspaper–and what can to be done to “change minds”:

What is disappearing, or seems to be disappearing, is a culture of debates between diverse opinions. Whether there is anything that can be done about it, I would say there is something that can be done, but nothing deep can be done, I think. What can be done is superficial, can be very, very useful. Teaching statistics to the young would be useful; teaching economics to the young would be useful; teaching self-critical thinking, or better yet, how to criticize other people, because this is more pleasant and more interesting — those things can be done. You could educate intelligence analysts; you could educate people who feed information to decision makers, to some extent, to improve their product. But those are very marginal improvements. When it comes to the big issues, I’m not very optimistic.

So maybe we can’t change minds.

Then how should we argue? On this point Arthur Brooks offers some very useful ideas. First, let’s reconsider the issue, which is how filter bubbles and social media flame wars and comment threadjacking is overtaking us:

Political differences are ripping our country apart, swamping my big, fancy policy ideas. Political scientists have found that our nation is more polarized than it has been at any time since the Civil War. One in six Americans has stopped talking to a family member or close friend because of the 2016 election. Millions of people organize their social lives and their news exposure along ideological lines to avoid people with opposing viewpoints. What’s our problem?

Brooks agrees with me, at least on this point: we need to encourage disagreement–but find a way to tone down the vitriol.

So what can each of us do to make things better? You might be tempted to say we need to find ways to disagree less, but that is incorrect. Disagreement is good because competition is good. Competition lies behind democracy in politics and markets in the economy, which — bounded by the rule of law and morality — bring about excellence. Just as in politics and economics, we need a robust “competition of ideas” — a.k.a. disagreement. Disagreement helps us innovate, improve and find the truth.

The real issue, according to Brooks, is contempt, “a noxious brew of anger and disgust”–empowered by outrage, hate, screaming matches, and, of course, ideological, tribal, and other differences. How can this be done?  Again, Brooks has ideas (and a book, on the way):

What we need is not to disagree less, but to disagree better. And that starts when you turn away the rhetorical dope peddlers — the powerful people on your own side who are profiting from the culture of contempt. As satisfying as it can feel to hear that your foes are irredeemable, stupid and deviant, remember: When you find yourself hating something, someone is making money or winning elections or getting more famous and powerful. Unless a leader is actually teaching you something you didn’t know or expanding your worldview and moral outlook, you are being used.

Key strategies for your next social media post or speech or public interaction:

• Resolve to treat others with kindness (not contempt).
• Begin now–even if you have used derisive or demeaning langauge.
• Use humor, warmth, and ju jitsu-like adaptation toward others who shower you with contempt.

Or, in Biblical parlance–and in the fine tradition of Ghandi–we can love our enemies.

Powerful Public Speaking

We can always give a better speech.

Speaking is a performance, according to Michael Port of Heroic Public Speaking. Take a look at a these useful insights from an actor-turned-speaking guru, starting with one tip on how to structure your talk.

6. Organize with frameworks.

A clear structure helps you remember what to say, and helps the audience understand what you say. Choose one of these five frameworks for your next talk:

• Numerical. This framework is easy to use, and flexible. Stephen Covey organized his presentation according to his bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. When he had 60 minutes, he could cover all habits. When he had only 20, he might cover three points.

• Chronological. Your step-by-step process should go in a particular order, to make it easy to follow.

• Problem and solution. Audience members want you to solve their problems. For example, you might point out that many people are nervous about speaking in front of groups. Then share how to overcome that same fear of public speaking.

• Compare and contrast. If you have two different concepts, use them both. Jim Collins structured his presentation, “Good to Great” by comparing and contrasting the pros and cons.

• Modular: This framework works particularly well in full-day workshops and events. In his live event, Port might divide the day into three modules: performer’s mindset, principles and public speaking master class.

  via Entrepreneur

Key Speeches | Liberty Medal Award for Senator John McCain

Last July, John McCain chided his beloved Senate colleagues for extreme partisanship and a failure to get work done. Now, he takes on the political culture led by the Breibartians embodied in a toxic type of nationalism and as what the NYT calls “an unfettered voice against Trumpism”. The speech has earned high praise from former political adversary Mitt Romney, who called it Lincolnesque and is, according to David Brooks, a “rallying cry around which the nation rediscovers its soul”. He further observes, after noting McCain’s failings such as a banking scandal, Sarah Palin this summation as to why the good Senator’s speech warrants close reading:

The moral fabric of society is invisible but essential. Some use their public position to dissolve it so they can have an open space for their selfishness. McCain is one of the strongest reweavers we have, and one of our best and most stubborn teachers.

Here is the full text via Time, including my own bolded highlights:

Thank you, Joe, my old, dear friend, for those mostly undeserved kind words. Vice President Biden and I have known each other for a lot of years now, more than forty, if you’re counting. We knew each other back when we were young and handsome and smarter than everyone else but were too modest to say so.

Joe was already a senator, and I was the Navy’s liaison to the Senate. My duties included escorting senate delegations on overseas trips, and in that capacity, I supervised the disposition of the delegation’s luggage, which could require – now and again – when no one of lower rank was available for the job – that I carry someone worthy’s bag. Once or twice that worthy turned out to be the young senator from Delaware. I’ve resented it ever since.

Joe has heard me joke about that before. I hope he has heard, too, my profession of gratitude for his friendship these many years. It has meant a lot to me. We served in the Senate together for over twenty years, during some eventful times, as we passed from young men to the fossils who appear before you this evening.

We didn’t always agree on the issues. We often argued – sometimes passionately. But we believed in each other’s patriotism and the sincerity of each other’s convictions. We believed in the institution we were privileged to serve in. We believed in our mutual responsibility to help make the place work and to cooperate in finding solutions to our country’s problems. We believed in our country and in our country’s indispensability to international peace and stability and to the progress of humanity. And through it all, whether we argued or agreed, Joe was good company. Thank you, old friend, for your company and your service to America.

Thank you, too, to the National Constitution Center, and everyone associated with it for this award. Thank you for that video, and for the all too generous compliments paid to me this evening. I’m aware of the prestigious company the Liberty Medal places me in. I’m humbled by it, and I’ll try my best not to prove too unworthy of it.

Some years ago, I was present at an event where an earlier Liberty Medal recipient spoke about America’s values and the sacrifices made for them. It was 1991, and I was attending the ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The World War II veteran, estimable patriot and good man, President George H.W. Bush, gave a moving speech at the USS Arizona memorial. I remember it very well. His voice was thick with emotion as he neared the end of his address. I imagine he was thinking not only of the brave Americans who lost their lives on December 7, 1941, but of the friends he had served with and lost in the Pacific where he had been the Navy’s youngest aviator.

‘Look at the water here, clear and quiet …’ he directed, ‘One day, in what now seems another lifetime, it wrapped its arms around the finest sons any nation could ever have, and it carried them to a better world.’

He could barely get out the last line, ‘May God bless them, and may God bless America, the most wondrous land on earth.’

The most wondrous land on earth, indeed. I’ve had the good fortune to spend sixty years in service to this wondrous land. It has not been perfect service, to be sure, and there were probably times when the country might have benefited from a little less of my help. But I’ve tried to deserve the privilege as best I can, and I’ve been repaid a thousand times over with adventures, with good company, and with the satisfaction of serving something more important than myself, of being a bit player in the extraordinary story of America. And I am so very grateful.

What a privilege it is to serve this big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, magnificent country. With all our flaws, all our mistakes, with all the frailties of human nature as much on display as our virtues, with all the rancor and anger of our politics, we are blessed.

We are living in the land of the free, the land where anything is possible, the land of the immigrant’s dream, the land with the storied past forgotten in the rush to the imagined future, the land that repairs and reinvents itself, the land where a person can escape the consequences of a self-centered youth and know the satisfaction of sacrificing for an ideal, the land where you can go from aimless rebellion to a noble cause, and from the bottom of your class to your party’s nomination for president.

We are blessed, and we have been a blessing to humanity in turn. The international order we helped build from the ashes of world war, and that we defend to this day, has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. This wondrous land has shared its treasures and ideals and shed the blood of its finest patriots to help make another, better world. And as we did so, we made our own civilization more just, freer, more accomplished and prosperous than the America that existed when I watched my father go off to war on December 7, 1941.

To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil. We are the custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad. We have done great good in the world. That leadership has had its costs, but we have become incomparably powerful and wealthy as we did. We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we don’t. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.

I am the luckiest guy on earth. I have served America’s cause – the cause of our security and the security of our friends, the cause of freedom and equal justice – all my adult life. I haven’t always served it well. I haven’t even always appreciated what I was serving. But among the few compensations of old age is the acuity of hindsight. I see now that I was part of something important that drew me along in its wake even when I was diverted by other interests. I was, knowingly or not, along for the ride as America made the future better than the past.

And I have enjoyed it, every single day of it, the good ones and the not so good ones. I’ve been inspired by the service of better patriots than me. I’ve seen Americans make sacrifices for our country and her causes and for people who were strangers to them but for our common humanity, sacrifices that were much harder than the service asked of me. And I’ve seen the good they have done, the lives they freed from tyranny and injustice, the hope they encouraged, the dreams they made achievable.

May God bless them. May God bless America, and give us the strength and wisdom, the generosity and compassion, to do our duty for this wondrous land, and for the world that counts on us. With all its suffering and dangers, the world still looks to the example and leadership of America to become, another, better place. What greater cause could anyone ever serve.

Thank you again for this honor. I’ll treasure it.