Hi everyone! This blog has become quite vast after a while, and I thought it might be useful to gather some of the more pedagogical posts on rhetoric together so teachers and students can use it as a learning tool. Below are some rhetorical concepts and theorists I hope I have helped to elucidate (make clearer, more understandable) and the links to blog posts dealing with them. Kairos
An application of the rhetorical exercise "topos of the tyrant" to a relevant modern case
Chaim Perelman's Overview of Arguments
These posts are a series describing the different arguments Chaim Perelman and Lucie Albrechts-Tyteca categorized, how they work, and how they can be defeated.
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
In his book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, presidential candidate Mitt Romney looks at the main state actors on the world stage and compares them to businesses with different business models. He sees the American leadership of the world weakening because "nothing is as vulnerable as entrenched success," a proverb he learned from his father's business experience. At the time, some criticized his assessment of Russia and China as being too "Cold War-ish," although many of his critics have later apologized and said "Romney Was Right About Russia." It may be a part of an occupational psychosis for a business man to see everything as likened to a business model, but that perspective also gave some interesting insights into the strengths and weaknesses of each nation's plan for success.
Today I'd like to do something similar, based on my occupational psychosis as a rhetorician, and give a brief overview of some of the main perspectives on world politics that the major actors use to make sense of things. These are different lenses or screens through which world events can be viewed, and it can help us to make sense of the logic that dictates or at least guides their actions, their moves and countermoves. As Kenneth Burke wrote, these different screens each turn our attention to different things and shows different meaningful relationships. He writes in Language as Symbolic Action: "Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality" (45). So here are a two of the screens and some feature of reality that they reflect, select, and deflect.
Freedom
Though this has often been a smokescreen to hide the real motivation (selfish national interest) it is also true that many choices have been made in US foreign policy that were not based on the goal of getting any immediate gain, but rather serving the long term benefit and freedom of a large group of people.
Following WWII, it would have been possible for the US to maintain their world leadership and keep all the other nations, who were all broken from WWII, in subjugation and disorder. Instead, they instituted the United Nations, The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund, and offered the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economies of Europe. They even offered, with the Baruch Plan, to share their knowledge of the atomic bomb and allow the United Nations to control all the uranium in America and in the world in general. As the world's only functioning economy, the world's only nuclear power at the time, and the largest and most advanced military in the world, the US could easily have become oppressive world masters, but they chose instead a course that led to unprecedented freedoms and wealth for millions of people around the world.
The seeds for this way of thinking goes back to the American revolution, where the greatest thing to be feared was the tyrant, and the greatest thing to be preserved for all was liberty. As Kenneth Burke writes in A Grammar of Motives:
"Considering the Constitution, then, as an enactment arising in history, hence a dialectic act, we find something like this: Thrust A (the will of the monarch) had called forth a parry A1 (the 'rights' of the people). A document is formed that memorializes and perpetuates this parry. And it survives, in its memorialization, after the role of the opponent, whose thrust called forth this parry has been removed" (365).
We find this anti-tyrannical attitude in Thomas Jefferson's quote about too much and too little law:
" … were it made a question, whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last; and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under care of the wolves. It will be said, the great societies cannot exist without government. The savages, therefore, break them into small ones."
With this frame of mind, one looks over the world and wants to see liberty. When one sees what resembles "the tyrant" and an absence of the rights set down in the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution as universal rights and self-evident truths, one immediately looks at how one can relieve and free the oppressed from the burdens of a tyrant. The assumption is, as Winston Churchill states, that when the people of the Earth are free they will move into "broad, sunlit uplands."
This sentiment is well and alive today, most notably in the US and Europe, with some very recent "converts" to this perspective in former Soviet Union states like Georgia and the Baltics. Here is a passionate defense of that perspective by the former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, denouncing Russia and envisioning a future of free nation states, without empires.
Though it has recently suffered a set-back in the US, with the "America First" policy of Donald Trump, John McCain and others both on the left and right side of the aisle still speak in defense of freedom and denounce tyranny and oppression in all its forms. Here as recently as in November.
Reflection of Reality
This terministic screen really does reflect an important reality in the world: There is a real difference between freedom and oppression. There is a difference in terms of which governments kill huge swaths of their citizens. Communist regimes have killed a total of between 83 and 100 million of their own citizens, with just the administrations of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Khmer Rouge alone killing between 21 and 70 million. In general, there is also a difference long-term in economic development and prosperity, and innovation (though Russia and China so far have been able to introduce market reforms without allowing for full democratic freedoms). Freedom vs. oppression also seems to have a rather universal appeal, with people all over the world willing to dedicate their lives to be able to live in freedom.
Selection and Deflection of Reality
What does this perspective miss? Why doesn't freedom flourish as soon as dictators are killed and regimes are toppled? Why is there a current movement even in free nation state democracies to elect parties and implement policies that are antithetical to this dedication to freedom? Well, a few things:
1. Freedom isn't easy.
Freedom can be great, but it can also be a huge burden. For people who were used to be told what to do and what to think, freedom can be disorienting, leading many to feel lost, abandoned, and alienated. Suzanne Langer claims that many Germans, growing up with an authoritarian system, felt disoriented in the modernistic Weimar Republic, and this made them easy prey for the collectivized lures of Nazism and Communism. Except for the absence of tyranny, what does freedom even mean for the average person? What does freedom mean to you if there is nothing you want to be free to do? In some ways, it can be a bit like what Ryan Hamilton says about freedom and being single (starting at 2 minutes.
For many people from the former Soviet Union, who were used to having the state plan and provide for them, freedom soon seemed more like abandonment. It may be similar for some Muslims who transition from rigid moral codes to countries where you can pretty much "do whatever you want" and react by seeking fundamentalist clerics online and become radicalized. Though economic aid, meaningful work, idealistic social projects, a strong social bond, and friendships can ease these plagues of modernity and transitions from authoritarianism, the hard truth may be that some will in the end still reject this because they simply don't want freedom.
2. Tyranny can be better than anarachy
Though state actors have been responsible for mass killings on a large scale, most people in the world are not killed by their own governments, for the simple fact that it is not in their interest. If nothing else, governments need people for tax revenue, recruits for the military, and to provide a labor force, so even the worst governments in the world provide some benefits to their populations. As long as you are not a threat to the government and control your tongue you can usually do your work and go about your everyday life without too much interference. People can live in the most oppressive conditions as long as there is some degree of predictability. Anarchy, on the other hand, can lead to a brutal war of everyone against everyone, with constantly shifting power structures, uncontrolled violence, and where what is praised one day can be punished the next day. That is a situation that is truly intolerable for people to live in. There is nothing as uncivil as a civil war, with neighbor fighting against neighbor. In comparison to this, even the most oppressive regime becomes tolerable and preferable. Which brings me to my next perspective.
Stability
For a while in college, I for some reason found myself listening quite a bit to an English-speaking Chinese radio station, and it was so interesting to observe how world events and news were covered on that station. The overwhelming term around which all evaluations of the world swirled was "stability". Whenever a protest, a war, an election, or anything else was covered, it was all seen through the prism of stability: "X country has returned to stability, Y country has recently been destabilized, the destabilization was caused by Z. Prospects are not good for having the country make a quick return to stability." It struck me that they reported the world news somewhat the way I am used to hearing reporting about the financial markets and stock exchanges. At some level, I am wondering whether this goes back to the Confucian focus on harmony, with harmony being a greater and more important virtue than truth. Another word for harmony is balance, and balance is a manifestation of stability.
Incidentally, this is a view shared with Vito Corleone (The Godfather) and Donald Trump. Vito Corleone observes that a gang war between the crime families is "bad for business" and therefore seeks harmony rather than vengeance (at least in the short term). Perhaps for similar reasons, Donald Trump thought Michael Gorbachev was a bad leader and praised the Communist regime in China based on their ability to maintain stability. This is from an interview he gave in 1990:
"Russia is out of control and the leadership knows it. That's my problem with Gorbachev. Not a firm enough hand. [...] Yet Gorbachev is getting credit for being a wonderful leader - and we should continue giving him credit, because he's destroying the Soviet Union."
"When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength."
The promise of stability has always been the lure of authoritarianism in its different forms, and the prism of stability makes you see a well-functioning democracy and a stable dictatorship as almost equivalent. With this perspective, it makes sense to knock down popular protests as though they were insurgent groups or foreign agents: after all, they are agents of instability, the devil in this moral hierarchy. Here is Vladimir Putin using that argument for all it is worth to defend supporting the Syrian regime, despite the fact that Assad's regime has killed most of the 250,000 killed in the Syrian Civil War.
Of course, even he speaks of democratization as being the ideal (though he actively undermines that same process for his own citizens in Russia). This just shows how prevalent the "freedom" lens is still in the world. He is arguing for stability, but needs to do so in the language of freedom.
Reflection of Reality
As I said, the yearning for stability is deeply ingrained in the human mind. With stability comes a measure of predictability, and with predictability comes a measure of safety. In some areas and countries, regimes focused on stability have been able to more effectively provide for the safety of the inhabitants than regimes focused on freedom. Even in democracies there is a provision called "martial law" where normal rights and procedures are abandoned in order to deal more effectively with an emergency or a crisis. In some ways, this is an admission that freedom is a burden and a luxury which can be put to the side in times of great need. The "stability" perspective maintains the importance of an aspect of reality that is essential. Even for the American military a "failed state" or "power vacuum" is the nightmare scenario. As far as it goes, modern world politics disprove or at least does not agree with Jefferson that no law is better than too much law.
Selection and Deflection of Reality
So what does this perspective miss? Why have so many people in past and modern times rebelled against and toppled regimes that were very adept at providing the basic needs of stability and predictability?
1. Freedom and stability are not mutually exclusive
You have to be a pretty bad leader to lose in a contest between your selfish but stable leadership and anarchy, but these are not the only options on the table. In the United Kingdom there has been some form of representational government at least since 1430, and yet it has been one of the most stable and predictable countries in the world by almost any measure during the last almost 600 years. The United States of America has enjoyed over 150 years without a civil war or major domestic dispute, despite absorbing the largest amount of diversity, immigration, and social change in any nation during that time. In addition, during the same time span both these countries have pretty consistently been among the most innovative and the most wealthy nations in the entire world. Yes, these patterns of peaceful, stable, and reliable democratic coexistence are not easy to create, but they have been replicated in nation after nation using these two as an example.
Yes, you need some time, both the US and England fought civil wars early in their democratic experiments. Yes, you need strong institutions. Yes, you need a somewhat enlightened electorate. It's not easy, but stable and reliable democratic governance is possible. And the benefit of that governance is pretty convincing. As Vox reports, "At the same time as democracy spread globally, every objective metric of human welfare jumped up dramatically. Between 1950 and early 2011, global life expectancy jumped from 47 to 70. From 1990 to 2011, the percentage of people who died before turning five fell by about half. The percent of people killed by war is 1/30th of what it was in the late 1940s. 721 million fewer people live in poverty today than in 1981." In comparison to this, the feeble promise authoritarians give of "stability" is pretty pathetic.
2. Dictatorships lack a mechanism for change, renewal, and improvement
On a pretty fundamental level, democracies and authoritarian regimes operate on the basis of some very different assumptions about people. For authoritarian regimes, the population is a threatening and irrational mob that needs to be controlled, trained, and supervised. They need to be organized by a superior intelligence who then rules by decree supported by force. However, there is nothing innate in those who arrive at the highest echelons of power in those regimes that endows them with superior intelligence to those in the population (unless the population can be kept stupid and ignorant by artificial means). Therefore, it is likely that ideas, mechanisms, and methods superior to those developed by the regime will be developed by the populace, and they will definitely be developed by neighboring free nations that do not supress these ideas in the same way. In order to keep up with the rest of the world, these regimes will have to reward merit, and once they reward merit they also give power. Once they give power, then sooner or later their own grasp of it becomes threatened.
The Soviet Union needed an enlightened elite to keep up with the US in the nuclear race, but this at the same time put the future success of the Soviet Union into their hands, thereby giving them influence. This influence was then used by the likes of Andrei Sakharov, who invented the Soviet hydrogen bomb, to undermine or change the rigid structures of the Soviet Union. In the 1980s he "helped to initiate the first independent legal political organizations and became prominent in the Soviet Union's growing political opposition."
In democracies, brilliant people and ingenious ideas can rise to the top without any threat to the system. Rather than gathering a movement to overthrow a regime violently, they can peacefully join political parties, debate their ideas, and win local or national elections. People who see errors or imperfections can join with others to remedy them, and if the errors or imperfections are significant enough they will sooner or later gain power to do so. As long as there are strong institutions and ideals to manage the "crisis" of a national election, there is no great instability or risk inherent in the transfer of power. Although democracies at times elect people completely unsuited for their office, overall democracies have produced some of the most eloquent, capable, and intelligent leaders, and have been spearheading the reduction of poverty and increase in health and standard of living. In an authoritarian regime you are either the organizer or the organized, whereas democracies allow people to both organize and be organized in turn. Below is an eloquent statement on this by Robert F. Kennedy (starting at 2:40).
Rhetorics of These
So how does this all influence the rhetoric used by the proponents for each of these systems? For the proponents of stability, the most important thing is to always hold up the devil of instability to scare the populace. In order to do so credibly, these regimes will sometimes create artificial instability in order to have a clear deterrent. Russia has fomented ethnic and religious tensions in Azerbajan, Ingusjetia, Abkhasia, and South Ossetia, Stalin divided the Fergana Valley into four nations in order to create tensions between population groups (preventing a direct rebellion against his rule), and Putin is currently more interested in prolonging the Syrian civil war than actually bringing it to a close. In addition, it serves their interest to create civil discord in the "so-called" stable democracies. In the 60s, the KGB were planning to assassinate Martin Luther King jr. and install Stokely Carmichael as the head of the civil rights movement, since he was more favorable towards a more violent approach. At the same time, they were supporting the Black Panthers and other paramilitary groups financially, because doing so could weaken the United States. More recently, they have used Facebook, Twitter, fake news websites, hacking, and intimidation to organize protests and events aimed at stoking racial and religious tensions, and creating disillusionment among the populace. And they are also providing funds and arms to the Taliban to prolong the war in Afghanistan.
Proponents of freedom on the other hand will look for and support initiatives, groups, and people who are trying to limit or fight against tyrannies. Sometimes they will take the zeal too far, and not pay attention to the dangers posed by instability. Being used to the proponents of stability using this as a scare tactic, they will often disregard warnings against or be blind to the dangers that come with giving freedom to areas without strong institutions and with long histories of ethnic and religious tensions. The invasion and subsequent "democratization" of Iraq showed quite clearly the dangers of that blindness. The current state of affairs in Libya, where people are again sold as slaves in the marketplace, shows just how bad a state of anarchy and tribalism can become. Also, with the focus on parrying tyranny this worldview may be blind to other threats and problems that go beyond the question of freedom and oppression. Finally, they may become lost in a game of always supporting the underdog, even though the underdog turns out to be just as bad an oppressor as soon as the shoe is on the other foot.
In Thinking about Leadership, Nannerl Keohane (referencing Kenneth Janda) describes how leaders are selected in ‘on-going groups of long duration’ by “occupying a position in a formal structure or being given formal status by a legitimizing agent” (55), and that an individual thus selected only needs to “exercise that power base to demonstrate leadership” (55). This may work in a traditional hierarchical organization, but in a network it becomes more complicated. As Newman, Barabasi, and Watts point out, networks that arise naturally (such as social networks), evolve “in a manner that is typically unplanned and decentralized.” Rather than looking at questions of authority and power relations, leadership in a network can be analyzed through “centrality indices . . . and measures of social capital,” with a vocabulary of “actor centrality, path lengths, cliques, connected components” (Newman, Barabasi, and Watts), etc. A great example is the analysis of our Economy which identifies the 50 best connected companies (and therefore most powerful) in the world economy (full article at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html).
Rather than leadership which depends upon formal hierarchical structures (which is the main focus of Keohane’s study), this is leadership that depends upon catching attention and creating interest; creating groups and communities out of a loosely connected web of individuals. Keohane compares situations like these to the desert island scenario in Lord of the Flies. There a leader may be chosen simply because she is more “articulate or attractive” (55), but the leader also has greater pressure to produce results since she cannot rely on the security commonly afforded by institutional (or traditional) legitimacy (55). What then must a person do to lead in such a society?
First of all, the leader must be able to attract attention. In “The Economics of Attention” Richard A Lanham makes the claim that leadership that depends more on rhetoric than institutional authority is the hallmark of the information age; where the scarce commodity that moves society is not land, labour, or capital, but attention. It is not surprising that the largest emerging companies in this new economy (like Apple, Google, and Facebook) are those who have been able to catch and keep human attention. Quoting Peter Drucker, Lanham writes, “Value is now created by ‘productivity’ and ‘innovation,’ both applications of knowledge to work.” In an age that is drowning in information, it has become more valuable than ever to be able to catch the attention necessary to transform information into knowledge. Lanham writes how this happens through “rhetorical figuration” which can expand and compress attention. This is the same attention that is needed to transform a communicated message into the conviction and dedication a leader needs her followers to have.
In Counter-Statement, Kenneth Burke describes how attention can be caught and kept through literary form. He claims that literary form is achieved by awakening and fulfilling expectations in the audience: “Form in literature is an arousing and fulfilment of desires. A work has form in so far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part” (124). Literary form comes natural to us as humans because it is part of our physical experience. It gives us the experience of a crescendo, which according to Burke “parallels certain psychic and physical processes which are at the roots of our experience” (45): “The accelerated motion of a falling body, the cycle of a storm, the procedure of the sexual act, the ripening of crops”(45), etc. In another description he says “It is the result of certain forces gathering to produce a certain result. It is the suspense of a rubber band which we see being tautened. We know that it will be snapped – there is thus no ignorance of the outcome; our satisfaction arises from our participation in the process” (145). This art of arousing desires is essential to create interest and the space for a potential leader to be able to attract followers. The leader may have the best plan or qualifications in the world, but unless she can attract the attention necessary to persuade her audience it will all be in vain. If she can arouse in her audience the desire to see her vision become reality, they will be personally engaged in the venture she has suggested. This desire will not be fulfilled until the dream has become reality, and the audience will be like the reader reading through the night to experience the completion of a plot. As Burke notes in Essays Toward A Symbolic of Motives, “an orator who is trying to persuade an audience to some decision or attitude must find ways of keeping his audience sufficiently amused so that they will continue to be an audience (though the purpose of his address is not to amuse them, but to enlist them in some ‘cause’)” (38). This indeed was the case in democratic Athens as described in Paul Woodruff’s First Democracy, where rhetors could “exert special influence without holding public office, simply in virtue of their speaking abilities” (33). Through literary form a leader can gain the platform she needs to have the chance to enlist supporters in her cause.
In his essay “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle’”, Kenneth Burke writes, “Every movement that would recruit its followers from among discordant and divergent bands, must have some spot towards which all roads lead. Each man may get there in his own way, but it must be one unifying center of reference for all” (192). To create unity out of diversity, the audience has to believe that they do have a core of common interests to unite their efforts. Though they remain individuals with individual experience, they may “identify” with others to join a group if they are persuaded that they have common interests. This implies that in order to get people to follow him, a leader has to communicate a common interest with his audience. A leader may do this by appealing to base needs or and desires such as money, power, common prejudices, or shared cultural heritage. Woodruff explains how Cleocritus was able to unite followers of the tyrants and the democrats by appealing to their common interests and culture as Athenians (First Democracy 83).
However, identification does not always rely upon pre-existing ties of fellowship. Effective leaders are able to create common interests where none may naturally exist. One way to do this is by articulating a vision which, although not initially of interest to the audience, is made interesting by the way it is described and linked with pre-existing interests. In Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games Mitt Romney describes the task of leadership as “creating a vision of higher purpose and . . . offering challenges beyond normal expectations” (xix). He writes, “Our task was to identify a defining vision, communicate that in a compelling way, and provide the kind of focus that reinforces that vision as a living, breathing thing, not just lip service. And if we were to succeed, it would be because of the commitment to that vision by the entire team, and by the community” (xix). The Salt Lake City Olympic Games are an interesting example. Here highly qualified people had to be persuaded to give up higher paying jobs to do more for less pay and without any certainty of work after the Games were finished. They had to be committed to a vision of higher purpose than their individual interests.
What is meant by ‘higher’ purpose? In Plato’s Phaedrus, leadership is not simply exploiting base interests to gain power over people, “dispensing miserly benefits of a mortal kind” (38), but rather a transcending process which brings both leader and follower closer to the gods. This transcendence is at once altruistic and egoistic. One gets personal benefit not by satisfying base passions, but by summoning one’s abilities to reach a new, higher level. As Socrates says, “they become winged and light, and have won one of their three submissions in these, the true Olympic games, and neither human sanity nor divine madness has any greater good to offer a man than this” (37-38). The concept of transcendence described by Socrates takes on metaphysical qualities as the base passions of man are overcome by divine madness (i.e. true love) which brings both leader and follower beyond this world.
What can this representation teach us about creating a transcendent vision? A transcendent vision need not be religious, neither does it have to be ethical. What such a vision does is that it paints an alternate version of reality to which the group can subscribe and which demands that individuals to a certain extent mortify their selfish desires for “the greater good.” It has to be idealistic, even though the ideals may be false. This in turn can fulfill the yearning human beings have to experience a sense of purpose and unity. Burke claims, “The yearning for unity is so great that people are always willing to meet you halfway if you will give it to them by fiat, by flat statement, regardless of the facts” (“Hitler’s ‘Battle’” 205-206). A vision is an abstraction of life where people from different walks of life can experience unity and a higher purpose which is normally prevented by our separate experiences of life. An effective leader must be able to catch the attention of other human beings and tap into their desire for unity and purpose by creating a vision as a banner under which they can gather. At the start of the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill raised that banner for Britain and the free world.
In “Art, and the First Rough Draft of Living” Burke mentions that Kant “held that weshould treat the moral law ‘as if’ it were supernaturally sanctioned, whether or not we believe in dogmas that would ‘prove’ it so. And in living by such an ‘as if,’ men can make themselves a better world” (157). The effective leader creates an ‘as if’ worth living by.
