The New York Sophist

Why is Bernie, or any other left-leaning person still using X or Twitter? This makes little sense to me. I guess this is just another example of people not realizing how their daily actions impact their politics. We need actual dialectical analytical folks out there with the political commentary, not just professional politicians with a brand, like Bernie.

Anyway, he X-ed something today in response to the Democratic party loss in the election:

I’m not sure why it won’t embed the way other things do on this site but it’s probably “user error” – which is what a friend of mine calls it every time I complain about my new iPhone. I hope to figure out how to embed tweets better in the future (or X’s).

Bernie misses the point here. He won’t want to talk to working class people, because working class people all share a very similar view – it is the foreigners that are taking away jobs, harming the economy, and increasing taxes. Most working-class people believe there’s a zero-sum game here with public money, and that the more we let in foreigners, legal or not, the less they will be able to take home in their check and the less good jobs will be available.

Politicians like Bernie would rather use the rhetoric of “change” – which isn’t a good word at all, it’s a “change” to move from a democracy, to a republic, to a plutocracy, to a dictatorship (the path we seem to be on now just like the Romans were). Change is so vague that anyone from any political position could use it. This is how we know Bernie isn’t serious; he’s a professional politician with a brand.

Addressing the zero-sum game means that Democrats or any politician who wants to engage working-class people will need to speak about racism and essentialism – two things that most politicians will not touch or discuss. They will vaguely gesture toward it, and then not respond when the racist and essentialist side says, “I support black people better than their own leaders do!” Which, of course, is another essentialist/racist view. What is required is a deep, deep, deep dive into the idea that we somehow have no public money and why that might be, the preconception that there’s a table with limited seats for those who want to work and be a part of a community, and that immigrants do not come here to commit crimes but find themselves in desperate situations due to the slow and poor policies we have for those people.

Bernie’s call to address the American working-class seems really beautiful and easy – it’s almost like a Trump campaign argument! But doing this is something so difficult, messy, and time-consuming no professional politician will do it.

If this interests you, it has to be done by you with the people you interact with in your daily life. This requires strategy, consideration, planning, and having difficult conversations with people who are your friends and who you care about. This is the province of rhetoric.

Unfortunately our universities are filled with RINOS – Rhetoricians in Name Only – who hate public speaking and teach it like they are teaching someone how to assemble a utility shelf for their garage. Most university rhetoricians who teach public speaking resent students, resent the course, feel like it’s beneath them, and just prostrate their entire curriculum to weird and vague assumptions about business norms (without having worked or studied business communication at all).

High School teachers are better positioned because students feel more open there to express ideas and teachers feel the pressure of the school board and community. They are performing more rhetorical dance moves in their class political discussions about class and race than the RINOs are.

A good solution is, unlike some rhetoricians and RINOs on Facebook are saying – only study fascism from now on or your work isn’t relevant (A wild claim from a discipline that encourages dilettantism, just attend an NCA convention to see it for yourself) to refigure the curriculum of the basic course and public speaking to reflect an investigation to how American government is 100% dependent on rhetoric. I’m going to be working on this and I will share my thoughts here on the blog.

But Sanders, or any professional politician, won’t do it. They understand the difficulty and danger of rhetorical engagement. They’d rather call for change for a vague “working-class.” These terms need not only more narrow definition, but serious inquiry behind them. I bet you won’t find many people who describe themselves as working-class – most people in America are middle-class, don’t you know? The problem is with those working-class people who are too stupid to vote correctly, etc. (This is RINO discourse)

I wonder if we really could support a true dialectical thinker in public office. What if they ran on a campaign that yes, government issues are complex and difficult and yes sometimes it feels like politicians ignore you. But I hope to get your support by showing you how deeply interconnected our policies with taxation and public services are with our treatment of people who come into this country, no matter how they get here.

What a rhetorical challenge! It does make me wonder, and oddly, it makes me somewhat hopeful as this difficult dive is quickly becoming our last political option versus a fascist dictatorship.

Take 1:

The difficult rhetorical lesson – if there is any perception that one’s economic situation is not as good as it once was, that belief cannot be engaged with any claims about human rights, rights to live how one wishes, civil rights protections or any such claim.

This perception can be very minimal. For example, if people perceive that the price of eggs is “too high” this will be a reason to dismiss a candidate, even an incumbent, who has a very strong foreign policy record or even economic record. The perception of the economic situation is connected directly to the President.

This means that people will shop at their preferred store, buying their preferred brands or even things that are unnecessary (lampooned in many great memes where an Xbox or PS5 is in with the groceries) and calling it the President’s fault that they can’t afford things.

This is also imaginary – the “better off” might have never taken place. Or it could be an imagined price from prior years. Or it could be a fantasy of what things “should cost.” Such communist fantasies like price fixing are very persuasive to right-wing voters: “A cheeseburger shouldn’t cost $20!” But they will also believe in the power of the free market, or assume the market is a natural force, like the wind and we have to adjust to it.

This is very dire for the rhetorician – any suggestion of a declined economic power, even a fantastical one, will beat out concerns for national security, domestic terrorism, corruption, selling secrets to the highest bidders, colluding with foreign governments to benefit oneself (kleptocracy) – all things that we have seen in Trump’s previous administration but are ok with because we could be really rich one day or rich people should be protected because they are what the country is all about. The idea that one has a very small chance of becoming a millionaire will always outweigh human rights for other citizens, particularly ones you have no connection to at all. The strategy must be one of identification first not division first – and certainly not the Harris ads that I enjoyed but did not help accomplish anything where supporters of Harris were cast as liars, hiding their true vote from friends and family knowing in their heart the right thing to do. It just doesn’t work, because identification/division doesn’t work this way. People love belonging and being a part of something; they don’t want to be shown that it’s an act.

The solution is hard to come up with out of context, but an economic focus is the name of the game. Once that perception is there the stain cannot be removed with “caring for other people.” We don’t have a society that works that way. People are very happy to watch others suffer (emphasis on others) so they can get a nicer car. Thinking about how to run a campaign in that environment is tough, but appealing to the loss of rights or exclusion of the needy isn’t going to do much except make the people who would already vote against the economic fantasy feel good.

Take 2:

“economics” is a catch-all that allows people to articulate deep-seeded racism and misogyny. For example, one can easily vote for the extreme right-wing candidate saying that economics are the bottom line, that they will be better off under such a regime, and conceal a more ruthless and horrific claim, that they don’t trust women, minorities, or foreigners. Even children of immigrants are suspect here. There is a genetic purity to nationalism which makes it well and truly fascist. Belief that American-ness (or any nationality) is genetic or only fully realized by a particular sex is the perfection of the fascist rationality. The conclusion becomes: Your life is meaningless unless the state can use you up. The dialectical rhetorical form is seamless. When people say “I’m voting for economic reasons” they are not voting for their own economic well being, that much is clear. They are voting for a general “economic” sensation that women, minorities, and foreigners (legal or not) are not in their correct places. They need to get back in their boxes and have children, servile minimum wage jobs, and leave. The variant of this is “they’re taking our jobs!” and the newest variant is “They’re eating the pets!”

Take 3:

The media handed the election to the right-wing by mistaking their role in society to give everyone a turn at the microphone instead of being critical about how people put their thoughts together. A well meaning, mass-media journalist can consider it ethical to “report on how people are voting” and then leave the statements out there to flap in the wind. They assume the viewers will be critical themselves and see the flawed reasons people share about why they are supporting this or that candidate. The media’s function – which we haven’t seen since 2020 during the “voter fraud” work of Trump – is to point out the lack of evidence, incorrect connection and assumption, etc. This work is only being done by the comedian-news, something we’d be better off without, where comedians sit with all the trappings of the mediated journalist and dispense the ridiculousness of politics. This has no effect on anything except to make us feel good about our preconceptions. The media, instead of sharing preconceptions and conclusions, should be engaging those by bringing in the experts to respond to the statements of the person on the street.

But mediated journalism will not do this as they are a multibillion dollar business. Instead, they will run with whatever people are saying, unaware (hopefully) that repetition on a national stage isn’t persuasive but informative. The June debate between Trump and Biden is a great example of this where the media decided, without evidence, to repeat over and over again that Biden had a “disastrous debate performance” and give no examples. They were focused on our focus on his elderly mannerisms, not the policies he cited and the accomplishments he touted. Trump’s comments were far more insane claiming Biden should be in jail, calling him a weak Palestinian, and other such statements.

screenshot of CNBC “Squawk on the Street” graphic that aired November 5, 2024

This graphic is a good example of what I mean. Here they present this data in a way that encourages engagement from and with the “journalists” who are hosting the program. These talking heads discuss the meaning of this data and simultaneously convey through the power of national media that there is a relationship here, not between perceptions of investors, not due to outside forces – even some coming from overseas, and not because of the policies of the Congress and President a term or two before them. This implies a spurious and direct relationship between the election of a President and market changes. It’s worse than a mistake, it’s encouraging reasoning that is damaging to any form of democratic order.

Another example is the repetition of the Reagan line “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” This metric is a begged question at best, and harmful, unethical equivocation at worst. For a journalist to ask an average person at a rally or a poll this question is unethical journalism without specifics. It just creates content that can be sliced and diced and served to keep us watching.

More on “Are you better off now than you were four years ago”

The media has helped craft the stage for fascism to steal the show and they won’t care – they are little more than “content creators” now, happy to get views and recycle clips of interviews time and time again until they are no longer getting attention. The role of the journalist is to craft the narrative, share the story of what’s happening, not hand the microphone around for everyone to speak on a national stage. Oddly, organizations like Braver Angels and the like think this is the solution – no criticism whatsoever – so we can continue to have family dinners while the country turns its hegemonic blade to its own throat.

We absolutely do not need Intergroup Dialogue to understand one another nor do we need Braver Angels so we can all go to brunch together or have dinner as a family and enjoy our company. We need a media and a rhetorical culture that celebrates inquiry, asking after the equivocation and begged question, and finding out more about your own stance. It’s not a good thing to know what’s good for the country or be right. It is a good thing to share that view in hopes someone will push back against it with critical faculty.