Perspective and Image

Secretary Hegseth's address to the military leadership yesterday shows what can go wrong if you do not consider the rhetorical situation. 

Hegseth, like many in the Trump administration, do not value words. They value power and authority, theorizing these things as more important than words or perhaps have no relationship to words other than to demonstrate power and authority. Words are the measure of deference to authority - when the king speaks, everyone must listen attentively even if it is total nonsense.

An alternative theory of words, one that works in a democracy is the idea that words are the best expression of what the speaker feels is best. They can be used to direct, unite, excite, comfort, and motivate the audience not only to do certain things but to be certain things. 

And it's very odd: Trump's January 6th speech really seemed to reveal an understanding of this. Trump's amazing speech had a crowd of regular people take on the role of members of a coup attacking police and destroying buildings, walking into secure areas of the U.S. Capitol ready to attack members of the government. But in that speech he never suggests this is what should happen. He only continuously "describes" the audience. 

Compare that to Hegseth, who really failed to develop any energy and identity with or for the leadership of the American armed forces. Hegseth comes off as someone who absolutely loves the military as a performance of a kind of masculinity he really admires. Speaking in front of people who have made a career out of the study of how to attack,defend, and neutralize enemy armies - many of which are very well disciplined and trained - one should be referencing a lot of the intellect in the room and arguing that what they are doing is clearly working, and that he stands with them as they face a very murky world ahead.

But Hegseth decided to discuss aesthetic appearance and gendered norms. Troops should not be fat. Troops should shave. Everyone should pass the most rigorous physical fitness tests. These are all very strange, unless you realize that Hegseth thinks he has a better understanding of what the U.S. military is than the generals, admirals, and other leaders in the audience. That understanding is simply this: Being a U.S. soldier is a performance of a very particular, valorized kind of masculinity. 

The other comments during the presentation that have worried people such as U.S. troops should train and practice in U.S. cities against American citizens are strange to us. To U.S. Military leaders, this sounds out of bounds or a court-martial experience to them. It's simply not part of being in the Military to them. It reveals what we already know: Trump and his supporters have a perception of what an American citizen looks like. Anyone who doesn't fit that image is fair game. Look at how ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection operate today. They take a look at those videos online to see what the Trump administration and their supporters believe non-valuable bodies and people look like. They deserve force, injury, and degradation. The military, for Trump supporters, is the performative image of what America is - scary, muscle-bound authority that cannot be stopped, like an action movie. 

The military, the way the military perceives it, is providing a necessary service of protecting a way of life, one that soldiers also enjoy. This is a life of freedoms, choices, associations, and security. They do not want to live in a world of authoritarian control. The military has a rigorous structure not because it's awesome, it's because this rigor is necessary to keep a clear head and clear perspective about where the threats lie. 

How should we perceive it? Hegseth and Trump have revealed that they hold the perspective of teenage boys, idolizing a fantasy film narrative of the military being an ideal sort of masculinity, ready to kick ass and destroy lives because they have been ordered to do it. Nobody in the military is there because they want to do this, and they certainly realize they might have to make tough choices. But Hegseth's rhetoric was nowhere close to this. I feel in closed rooms of high ranking military members there is a conversation about how to placate him without ruining the system we've developed to protect a very threatened democracy.

Poverty Rhetoric

Not only do we have to support idiots like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and others who revel and profit in a poverty rhetoric, now here is more bad news for rhetoricians. 


Not only has MTV cancelled Catfish, now apparently Nev has become a real estate agent?


I mean good for you Nev if that’s your dream but here is someone who created and hosted a show that demonstrated the power of communication, conversation, and rhetoric. All sides were revealed: the deceptive nature of rhetoric and its healing and transformative properties. Catfish is the rhetoric our politics needs. 

Contrast this with Kimmel and Colbert whose rhetoric depends on the assumption that people ARE their beliefs. There’s no hope to change minds or ideas. People who think or believe opposite of Kimmel or Colbert are simply losers. They are the butt of all jokes. And let’s ensure that we believe they can’t change! This helps generate millions for these bozos. 

Yes write your comment about the importance of comedians. Catfish always brought the humor. But it was a collective laugh at the error of our ways as desiring, hopeful beings. Colbert and Kimmel focus their humor on shame and eradication. For them, the humor is based on the idea that the world would be better without their political enemies. Catfish encourages us to see even the most depraved people as mistaken. 

Kenneth Burke would like Catfish. It’s the comic frame. Kimmel and Colbert are the tragic frame. Who is leading us into civil conflict? Increased violence? Those who practice comedy through the desire to render those who are mistaken into fools that should be rendered into laughter. 

Washington, Audience, Uber

Not exactly the audience for this Uber ad, but it really brings a sinister vibe to the party doesn't it?

This ad continued to appear every time I got an Uber last weekend in D.C. Finally, in the hotel pool, an ex Army special forces guy revealed that he's in town for a drone warfare convention at National Harbor. 

So here's Uber making a lot of good assumptions about audience. 

First, if you are using an Uber you're in town temporarily or visiting. 

Secondly, there's a huge weapons convention going on that is military grade.

Third, it's in National Harbor, so if you are going there or coming from there you are probably here for that.

This goes to show how targeting of persuasion works as I find the advert to be pretty scary. Most people might find it so, I would think. But the people for the convention might go by their booth to get more details and see if it's something they need to acquire for whoever they work for.

It is a little relieving that they don't know THAT much about us, isn't it?

Thomas Jefferson, Rhetorician

Here's Thomas Jefferson's full personal library, as we understood it to exist with a number of placeholders for volumes that are missing or have been recorded as destroyed. 

This was an incredible place to spend some time - I think I was here for about 30 minutes and surveyed his rhetoric and oratory books. Here are some observations:

Roman books were in Latin - he had the expected Cicero works, but also an edited version of Quintilian in Latin. 

He had Greek rhetoric books in French, including the complete works of Isocrates in multiple volumes. That got my interest.

He had a number of oration and oratory/public speaking books of the time, many from the 16th century that were the standard English oration books. 

He had no English translations of any of the ancient sources. 

What should we make of all this? 


Kimmel et al

The politics of boycotting a company that makes slop (Disney) a TV network that offers slop (ABC) a studio that has ruined film (Marvel) and goofy sports journalism (ESPN) to defend a tepid host of a bad advertisement for all of the above feels too easy.

Kimmel isn’t clever or funny. His whole career is based on low hanging fruit. The joke that got him in trouble was just playing a press pool clip of Trump talking. He didn’t even have to write anything for it. 

Kimmel’s job is being a hype man for the Disney megacorp. All the interviews are from the stars of film and tv that the company makes. It’s not some creative singular show that offered something to us to consider or moved our ways of thinking around. 

The danger here is that people are so willing to rally around a corporate clown. This speaks to how little serious threats authoritarian or fascist leaders have in the U.S. The real depressing thing is how few political artists, poets, and humorists there are that have access to a national audience in a way that matters. The man who made millions drinking bad beer and showing us slow motion girls on trampolines is not worth anyone’s political thought. But it’s the only sticking point we have. Maybe the authoritarians won long ago and this is just their passion play.
—