I just heard again advice that Donald Trump's critics took and still are dense enough to take Mr. Trump "literally but not seriously," whereas his supporters took and continue to take him "seriously but not literally."
A number of times, I taught classes in college composition starting with sayings, clichés, figures of speech, and other overlapping categories of language, and one of the tactics I insisted on was starting with the literal meaning of a figure of speech. To take such language seriously, you start by looking at what it says, literally.
"A stitch in time saves nine": Nine what? Complete the sentence: nine stitches. Always and inevitably nine stitches? Of course not: sometimes one or two will do; sometimes it takes some serious sewing. The idea is — the "tenor" of this sewing "vehicle" — is that a little (relavively) minor maintenance now will avoid big(ger) problems later.
So far so innocuous, but what if a coach or boss says s/he wants "110% effort" on your part? Obviously, you can't give more than 100%, but how much dedication is being demanded of you? Well, you can't know: agree to giving "110%" and you've just written a figurative blank check on your time and effort. If you're into speaking truth to bullshit and don't really need the sport or the job — this is a time to demand clarification of the "tenor" of the "110%" vehicle. (Good guess: These authorities want everything they can get from you.)
Or what if a person of far greater power threatens you with "No options are off the table." You'd damn well better start thinking about that "No" very, very literally. That's an open-ended threat, and it can cover a whole lot of nastiness.
So when Donald J. Trump leads a cheer of "Lock her up! Lock her up!" one should remember that populist Folkish Leaders (and my snarky capitals do "mean" here) — you should remember that in the lifetimes of some remaining old farts populist Folkish Leaders have locked up political opponents and, when that worked out for the Leader went far beyond.
If you’re Hillary Clinton, you should damn well take that chant both literally and seriously, and Donald J. Trump should do the same with Hillary’s knowing the political saying “Do unto others before they do unto you.”
And all involved should ratchet back their rhetoric.
Showing posts with label threats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label threats. Show all posts
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Saturday, October 31, 2015
"Justice or Else": A Brief Rhetorical Analysis
On The Daily Show for 10 October 2015, Roy Wood Jr. asked some White folks what they made of the Million Man March Commemoration slogan "Justice or Else," specifically what was meant by the "or Else." Wood got answers indicating "it sounds threatening" with more specifics from one young woman including, "like riots, like violence, shit [bleeped out] going down" and several more phrases indicating bad things like "blood, gore, death." Wood responded "You get all that from 'or Else'?!" The young woman answered back "It's a wide-open category, open for interpretation" — and Wood got the great laugh line I hear as "No wonder White folks write all the horror movies; [you?] just conjure up crazy shit in your heads."
Wood's next line — a transition back to the Million Man March — was, "So I guess a slogan demanding fairness and equality can easily be interpreted by certain people as murder and mayhem"; and he returned to the march and got the specific answer, to "or Else" in this context: a nicely anticlimactic one, that the "or Else" planned was holiday economic boycotts.
As one with some experience in the propaganda and protest biz, and a one-time teacher of courses with the word "Rhetoric" in the title, I'll get pedantic enough to say the young White woman was exactly right on "or Else": "Its a wide-open category, open for interpretation," which is what makes it effective.
It's like the phrase "by any means necessary," or like a US President saying "No options are off the table." To use an example out of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and recent history: Does "by any means necessary" include throwing "sulphuric acid in a child's face" if that is thought necessary in the struggle (whatever struggle)? Was the President of the United States threatening to bomb Teheran off the face of the Earth? Probably not, but strategic bombing is an option: obviously; with a couple of bombs the US blew most of Hiroshima and Nagasaki off the face of the Earth, and we and the British did a pretty thorough job more conventionally destroying Dresden.
Similarly, in a sense, with demonstrations.
During the National Student Strike of 1970, my group at the University of Illinois did a good job of keeping things peaceful (even if we didn't do well getting media coverage: "No blood, no news," as one newsroom exec told us explicitly). Still, we were aware that we had a limited window of opportunity to negotiate with the U of I administration: "As long as they look at a delegation of us and see a mob at our backs," however peaceful, or small, the actual crowd, we had leverage to deal.
Demonstrations are a way of exerting power in Hannah Arendt's sense in On Violence: large numbers of people gathering together in concerted action. From the point of view of The Powers that Be, however — always and inevitably — large demonstrations carry an implicit threat: the crowd may get violent, and its very existence is at least somewhat disruptive.
And that is fine. "Power concedes nothing without a demand," as Frederick Douglass said, and at least on occasion the demand must be backed up, minimally by the threat of disruption.
Which returns us to perceived threats.
In the US everything political, to overstate a bit, is at least "inflected" by race, and the racial (or racialist or racist) aspect with the White understanding of "or Else" is a generalized White fear of Blacks on the solid as well as pathological grounds that we Whites as a group have ripped off, exploited, and otherwise injured American Blacks as a group, and those Blacks might well want restitution ... and some might want revenge.
So let us cut the crap: "or Else" is always an open-ended threat made more effective in this instance because US Whites generally see Blacks as a threat to start with and because the Powers that Be see any massing of the masses as a potential danger. If the "or Else" is merely "a slogan demanding fairness and equality" with the threat no more than an economic boycott — well that is something for which Whites should be grateful, but also something demonstration organizers shouldn't repeat too often.
Open-ended threats open to nervous if not paranoid interpretation — can work nicely.
Wood's next line — a transition back to the Million Man March — was, "So I guess a slogan demanding fairness and equality can easily be interpreted by certain people as murder and mayhem"; and he returned to the march and got the specific answer, to "or Else" in this context: a nicely anticlimactic one, that the "or Else" planned was holiday economic boycotts.
As one with some experience in the propaganda and protest biz, and a one-time teacher of courses with the word "Rhetoric" in the title, I'll get pedantic enough to say the young White woman was exactly right on "or Else": "Its a wide-open category, open for interpretation," which is what makes it effective.
It's like the phrase "by any means necessary," or like a US President saying "No options are off the table." To use an example out of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and recent history: Does "by any means necessary" include throwing "sulphuric acid in a child's face" if that is thought necessary in the struggle (whatever struggle)? Was the President of the United States threatening to bomb Teheran off the face of the Earth? Probably not, but strategic bombing is an option: obviously; with a couple of bombs the US blew most of Hiroshima and Nagasaki off the face of the Earth, and we and the British did a pretty thorough job more conventionally destroying Dresden.
Similarly, in a sense, with demonstrations.
During the National Student Strike of 1970, my group at the University of Illinois did a good job of keeping things peaceful (even if we didn't do well getting media coverage: "No blood, no news," as one newsroom exec told us explicitly). Still, we were aware that we had a limited window of opportunity to negotiate with the U of I administration: "As long as they look at a delegation of us and see a mob at our backs," however peaceful, or small, the actual crowd, we had leverage to deal.
Demonstrations are a way of exerting power in Hannah Arendt's sense in On Violence: large numbers of people gathering together in concerted action. From the point of view of The Powers that Be, however — always and inevitably — large demonstrations carry an implicit threat: the crowd may get violent, and its very existence is at least somewhat disruptive.
And that is fine. "Power concedes nothing without a demand," as Frederick Douglass said, and at least on occasion the demand must be backed up, minimally by the threat of disruption.
Which returns us to perceived threats.
In the US everything political, to overstate a bit, is at least "inflected" by race, and the racial (or racialist or racist) aspect with the White understanding of "or Else" is a generalized White fear of Blacks on the solid as well as pathological grounds that we Whites as a group have ripped off, exploited, and otherwise injured American Blacks as a group, and those Blacks might well want restitution ... and some might want revenge.
So let us cut the crap: "or Else" is always an open-ended threat made more effective in this instance because US Whites generally see Blacks as a threat to start with and because the Powers that Be see any massing of the masses as a potential danger. If the "or Else" is merely "a slogan demanding fairness and equality" with the threat no more than an economic boycott — well that is something for which Whites should be grateful, but also something demonstration organizers shouldn't repeat too often.
Open-ended threats open to nervous if not paranoid interpretation — can work nicely.
Monday, March 23, 2015
Addendum: Journalistic "C's" — Historical Context (6 March 2015)
In an article published in my local newspaper on 6 March 2015, the columnist Martin Schram quotes US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, Republican of California chiding his colleagues for holding up funding for the Department of Homeland Security when "We face more global and domestic threats today than ever before […]."
Mr. Schram says the Congressman "blasted" his fellow conservatives, and certainly the blast was well deserved — but Mr. Schram should have provided an introductory warning such as, "Using the rhetorical device of hyperbole, Nunes blasted his fellow conservatives …."
'Cause come on! British forces burned public building in Washington, DC, in 1814 — including "the presidential mansion" — and the War of 1812 was a fairly close thing. The US Civil War was by definition a deadly threat to the American Union, and the United States was in great danger during World War II and the Cold War. The Great Depression and the protests and the riots of the long 1960s weren't on the threat level of Fascism or Stalinist Russia, but they were very serious, as was the crime wave of the 1980s.
The threat of thermonuclear annihilation is still with us, but that's a matter for nuclear build-down, which Mr. Nunes probably doesn't have in mind — and probably ditto for resource depletion and climate change.
So, again: Context, journalists, context, in this case historical, and a sense of proportion. It's a good idea to fund the Department of Homeland Security, period. There are threats out there; they don't have to be the worst in history.
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