Some Rhetoric

First, ‘I statements’ and being behind the scenes – I’ve been fascinated by the treatment of presidential campaigns in particular in the media, where media stories focus not on reporting a message, but the creation of a message and the coverage of predicted outcomes of politician’s uses of media devices. (example is this article in the NYT about Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer) This also appears in political documents which talk about the way that ‘the American people’ will receive arguments, particularly prevalent in the painting by both major political parties of the other as extremist and marginalized. These rhetorical texts seem to be on some level, prior to actual political messages, that gives the audience a sense of being ‘behind the scenes,’ understanding more than a message, but also the way other people will perceive a message. I find these strategies effective, and here’s why. When an audience experiences a ‘typical’ rhetorical text, like a speech, they make judgments about each statement, passing some judgment about the truth, morality or usefulness of each argument. So: “America is at war” requires the audience to question their understanding of war, the condition of America today, etc… However “A majority of Americans today recognize that our country is at war” not only makes the same argument, but bypasses judgment by the audience of the claim – we already ‘know’ the claim is persuasive, which makes questioning of its truth more difficult, and transforms treatment of the claim by the audience a question of ethos – what do we think about the American people and their belief about war? So with political analysts talking about politicians choices (and the implications stemming from them, the question is of the analyst’s ethos rather than how audiences in general might actually treat a message.

Second ‘pop-science –

Scientific certainty – science in general parlance and western rationality carries a mantle of absolute veracity, a standard of truth that cannot be surpassed. Good science is certain science, endlessly repeatable by however many people. This creates space for the strategy of doubt and mystification by industries which kill people – calling studies of harm or warming inconclusive or calling attention to dissenting opinions concerning the harm in question. People believe that studies should be absolutely conclusive to qualify as scientific evidence for a truth, because of the status science has as verification of our industrial civilization

Heartbeat – a bill in the Georgia senate would require providers of abortion to provide women seeking abortions a chance to listen to the heartbeat of a fetus before the abortion. This is the same pop-medicine pseudo science bullshit that we saw with the Terri Schaivo case- people make random conjecture about what life means and when it begins based on common parlance. I think the ‘heartbeat’ think (also seen here) comes from the (too numerous) medical entertainments where we see people being revived or being declared dead based on the machines which beep and show the line depicting heartbeat – the matter of life and death as it is most commonly seen in American public discourse looks and sounds like a heartbeat – it’s a visable and audible measure that transfers well over TV that becomes a stand in for realistic medical decisions (which shouldn’t be the subject of legislation, except to reserve space to make a decision for the agents directly involved, namely women seeking abortions)

Duncan