Ivie Essay
Submitted by Ed Appel on Tue, 2005-08-02 09:00
Robert L. Ivie's essay, The Rhetoric of Bush's War on Evil, is surely the best thing I've read on the discourse and persuasive strategies of our 43rd president. There are so many trenchant observations in this critique, it will take several short posts to do justice to them. Needless to say, it is a hard-hitting polemic against, as well as warning about, Bush's brand of snake oil. Nevertheless, Ivie's analysis is subtle and balanced, careful to point out sharp distinctions between, as well as frightening similarities to, Hitler's <em>Mein Kampf</em>, the benchmark piece of propaganda from which the author takes his Burkean inspiration.
Let me first split hairs with Ivie on two possible points of contention. Early on, he likens Bush's rhetoric to that of Hitler in the sense that the global scapegoating of the international Islamic terrorist as the cause of, or as the chief explanation for, America's economic ills, namely, its gargantuan deficits, is similar to that of Hitler's scapegoating of the intenational Jew as the cause of all of Germany's financial problems following the Great War. Bush's sleight-of-hand thus deceptively substitutes a noneconomic explanation for one that could realistically account for an economic ill. Ivie could have been a bit more nuanced here by noting that in Hitler's case, the scapegoat as cause was made out of whole cloth. In Bush's case, yes, the president is being grossly disingenuous, but the war on terror has contributed some to America's threatening financial crisis. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the recession and 9/11 combined do account for about one-third of the 2004 deficit (Paul Krugman, Checking the Facts in Advance, New York Times, October 12, 2004). Bush has been riding this pony for more than a year now, quite mendaciously, but not altogether so.
The other minor point I'd make is, rhetorical tragedy, unlike aesthetic tragedy, fosters an attitude of rejection every bit as much as it functions as a frame of acceptance, as Ivie offers. Burke's theory of tragedy in Attitudes Towards History works well for theatrical and literary art, the main focus of his chapter on Poetic Categories. It does not fit one-to-one, however, with the rhetorical situation. I refer you to my article on the rhetoric of William F. Buckley, Jr., in the Western Journal of Communication, Summer, 1996, pp. 279-80
These are, though, mere quibbles. I'll get to the quite potent gravamen of Ivie's case in my next post.
Comments
Some other points and phrases I especially like in Ivie's critique:
In paragraph #8, Ivie lists the populist pretensions [of Bush's that] serve elitest interests without the slightest sign of embarrassment. This is a wonderful passage that highlights the mendacious contradictions between Bush's public rhetoric and his executive actions (sometimes taken on Friday afternoons, too late for the evening broadcast network news). I think it was Joshua Green, writing in The Washington Monthly, who said that Bush, who says he doesn't do polling, used push polls like crazy his first year in office to discover ways to sell his corporation-friendly policies via language that would sound responsible, mainstream, and preservationist. Talk about rhetoric as the strategic use of ambiguity for persuasive purposes (GM)! The discourse of George W. Bush is a risible, yet sad, almost paradigmatic example. Ivie summarizes this strain in Bush's polemics and pronouncements so very well.
Paragraph #14 offers another helpful summary of Bush's deceptive rhetorical tactics. It also probes to the heart of Bush's transcendental drama: All rhetorical roads led back to the 'Rome' term of Christian faith, . . . , Ivie says. Bush's America would be purified by dissociation with evil through a great battle with Islamic 'terrorism.'
Ivie coins some more memorable lines in paragraph #16 and beyond: Indeed, the arrogance of the president's Christian humility [is] (yet another pretentious distortion of religious principle), . . . . The author speaks also of Bush's transparently coded language and his pious extremism. He traces that cycle of rightwing radicalism presently operating in the political mainstream back to where it began baldly over four decades ago with Barry Goldwater's resounding declaration . . . that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Curently situated in the midst of the conservative swing, Americans are now habituated to the demagoguery of Orwellian rhetoric in one form or another.
I'll holler one more rant into the void later, perhaps, on the perfections and sacrificial elements in Ivie's analysis of the Bushean drama. I'm feeling more and more like the designated respondent for the KB Journal rather than Conversation Editor, but so what. I can always talk nervously and loquaciously, a la P&C, with myself.
Ed