gather round ye emilys and henrys for a tale of woe and worry. stay close to the campfire where the wolves can't get you.
i have a subscription to the well where i came across a post that finally gave me the impetus to begin writing about the ruminations that have been rattling around inside my skull since november 2000. during my stint as an undergraduate student in the ministry of literature, they taught me to pay very close attention to language. i learned to cut my teeth on the soft pulp of the words of others, to rend them asunder, to turn them in on themselves. i suppose this is why i am so sensitive to vocabulary because it betrays certain things about a given statement or argument.
i think i can safely state that most english students and professors are liberals. it saddens me however to note that it is the hard right that has best learned the art of understanding and capitalizing on the nuance of words. in that direction lies the path to a successful argument. they learned twenty years ago the lesson that our liberal readership has most unfortunately failed to grasp -- a successful argument is not an argument that is factually correct. a successful argument is one that sticks. a successful argument is one that people believe. and belief, emilys and henrys, has absolutely nothing to do with truth. therefore, a successful argument makes a successful claim to truth.
demagogues of all stripes have long known that a successful argument can often be constructed by advantageous use of existing beliefs, regardless of whether those beliefs are based on empirical evidence or not. if one can manage to make one's argument appear to derive from a heritage of accepted truths, then one's ideas are more likely to replicate themselves in the public discourse. the most successful arguments gain a place in the collective unconscious because those beliefs have the added advantage of appearing to have always been true, and, thus, they occupy a seemingly unimpeachable status.
the hard right has been far more successful in the battle to define the meanings of words than the left. they eschew the need for any transparent weighing of meaning and reference when arguing their viewpoints. they make arguments without announcing they are making arguments, which would signal that their assertions are open to argument rather than simply a statement of what is true. they understand the importance of framing the discourse without being obvious about it. they understand the importance of the choice of words, and, my friends, they have been very very successful at the art of verbal sleight of hand.
i do not refer to the bumbling bush administration. their lies could hardly lay claim to any such skill. their lies are not successful because they are told well. their lies are successful because of the twenty years of rhetorical groundwork that came before them. we have much work to do if we hope to expose the lies of even this band of fumble-tongued charlatans.
let us begin with a vocabulary lesson.
the post from the well that is the genesis for today's rhetorical excavation:
Chad Makaio Zichterman (makaio) Fri 19 Sep 2003 (11:59 AM)stay tuned for further developments.term: for when a few words serve as shorthand for reference to an implicitly longer description, as in:
fascism: a system or movement, based upon appeal to authority and demonization of a chosen "other," characterized by the attempt to secure and exercise vast centralized control
trade fascism: a fascist movement in which consolidation of private profit is held presumptively as the only rational motive for human behavior, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes sponsoring such an agenda are projected as the only legitimate avenues of influencing policy, and all those with other top priorities (i.e. those who give primacy to substantive democracy, environmental or political sustainability, cultural integrity, human rights, etc.) are dismissed out of hand as irrational and/or subdued through coercion and direct force
apologist: one who apologizes for or makes light of the substantial negative impacts of a given idea or practice (i.e. "apologists for chattel slavery attempt to argue that the descendants of enslaved Africans in the Americas are better off than many modern free Africans)
