[KB] "Trivial Repetition," "Dull, Daily Reenforcement"
Clarke Rountree
rountrj at uah.edu
Fri Sep 19 16:01:24 EDT 2014
Ed,
You should open a political consulting firm for progressives! They could
use your advice, not for a short-term win, but for a long-term change.
Clarke
On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 2:45 PM, Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com>
wrote:
> Bob and All,
>
> Thanks to Professor Soetaert for his follow-up on my post about
> Terrence Deacon’s “Symbol Concept” and Deacon’s research and thought in
> general. As I indicated, I want to get back later with more on Deacon’s
> relevance to Burke studies. I’ll forward that post to Professor Deacon.
>
> Here, I’m responding more directly to Bob Wess’s query about what
> political points I’d want to see emphasized via “trivial [or maybe not so
> trivial] repetition and dull, daily reinforcement.” I’ll keep in mind Chip
> and Dan Heath’s book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
> (New York: Random House, 2007), as I go. The Heath’s recommend that we aim
> for SUCCESS, that is, a message that’s simple, unexpected, concrete,
> credible, emotional, and story-containing. Forget about the extra “S.”
>
> Here’s the simple mnemonically-memorable (I would hope) summary of
> salient points I think we need to repeat again and again and again:
>
> “Corporate control and exploitation for themselves of World trade;
> Wages, taxes, and debt; Wars of choice; and the Warming of our planet are
> destroying the American Dream and a liveable future for ‘The People.’”
>
> The mnemonic repetition of the “W” in “World trade,” “Wages,”
> “Wars,” and “Warming planet” invests the statement with a sermon-like
> catchiness that can serve to reinforce, make easy-to-recall, this summary
> of the dire problems the “bad guys,” the counteragents, the “Corporate
> Interests,” are foisting on “The People” of USAmerica. I choose Ralph
> Nader’s pejorative “Corporate” for the dislogistic pole in the dialectic
> because it insulates considerably against the counter-charge of “class
> warfare” that something like the “1 percent” would invite. We would not be
> inveighing against the financial incentive per se that capitalist orthodoxy
> says fuels our economic engine, just its current grossly unfair and
> unbalanced operations.
>
> I choose “The People” as the eulogistic pole in this dramatic
> opposition for the reasons Our Hero argued for it in his 1935 speech to the
> American Writers Congress (Simons and Melia, The Legacy of Kenneth Burke,
> 1989, pp. 267-273). In summary, “The People” is inclusive, untied to any
> given type of employment, and un-class warfareish.
>
> Now, what about a storyline? Here’s a shortened version:
>
> “Once upon a time, in the post-World War II, post-Roosevelt U.S.,
> an American---call him Joe Assembly Line---could graduate from high school,
> get a factory job, marry, and raise a family on one income.
>
> “Why not today? Because so-call “American” corporations have
> bribed our politicians to fix the system in their favor; sold Joe out to
> cheap foreign labor; pledged allegiance to the one-world marketplace, with
> its bloated profits and offshore tax havens; thumbed their nose at shared
> sacrifice and equal taxation, to the tune of an immense national debt; and
> said to the planet that’s dying under their greed, ‘Go stick it!’”
>
> Is that emotional enough? Can it be made concrete and credible?
> Easily available documentation, ad infinitum and searingly specific, awaits.
>
> The “unexpected”? Not sure about that. But there is a sharp
> turnaround in Joe Assembly Line’s fortunes in this scenario, and it did not
> take long. I dare say HE wasn’t expecting it.
>
> Greg Desilet and I suggested a modification of Burke’s call for
> “comedy” in symbolic action and human relations (RSQ, 2011, Number 4). In
> time of war, or a credible threat of war on our nation, adopt the form of
> an arpeggio (first, part-chord or discord, then chord, in succession, not
> simultaneously). Mobilize with rhetorical tragedy, then shift to
> rhetorical comedy when conditions appear propitious. And, following
> Burke’s prescription in “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle,’” ultimately
> scapegoat the opponent’s scapegoating itself, not adversaries per se.
>
> Here, I’m enjoining employment of hard-nosed melodrama at the
> start, before an ultimate shift back to the Burkean comedy of inclusion.
> (No death or banishment for all time in melodrama, only sharp political
> defeat.) An awareness of our own complicit part in much of these global,
> economic, political, and social dislocations is required as background,
> even if not initially put front and center. An attitude of charity, though
> sublimated at first, can at least temper our discursive fury. As Burke
> said, we can use any dramatic framing, as long as we internally, at least,
> “discount for language” and its extravagant incentives.
>
> That’s my counsel, you nationally significant “leftists”---both of
> you!
>
> Have a nice weekend.
>
> ,
> Ed
>
>
> P.S. Do you think what’s happening now is something of a reprise
> of 2003, not with the same level of duplicity necessarily, but with
> corporate interests, focused in Middle Eastern oil, still pulling the
> strings?
>
> I ask.
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Thu, 9/18/14, Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com> wrote:
>
> Subject: Re: [KB] "Trivial Repetition," "Dull, Daily Reenforcement"
> To: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>, "HERBERT W. SIMONS" <
> hsimons at temple.edu>
> Cc: kb at kbjournal.org
> Date: Thursday, September 18, 2014, 11:41 AM
>
> Carrol,, Herb, and All,
>
> Carrol, I may be guilty of underplaying
> Democratic malfeasance in all this, but I think you are
> overplaying the matter with the “Democrats are the more
> effective evil” theme. Thomas Frank may be near to
> your view, and substantially correct, if he’s suggesting
> that Democrats are only “MARGINALLY better” than
> Republicans. But I would caution that the Dems are
> still “marginally BETTER.”
>
> Take the Iraq war. (As Henny
> Youngman might say, PLEASE!) I have a hard time
> believing, if the judicial coup of 2000 had not occurred,
> and he had been awarded the presidency, that Al Gore would
> have taken us into that disastrous conflict. The
> Afghanistan fiasco might have transpired, but Iraq?
> Not likely. (We had to do something in
> Afghanistan. The scapegoat motive was just too
> intense. I think a Burkean ought to realize
> that. Air strikes and covert/commando raids should
> have been the MO, not all out warfare and nation
> building. But, sadly, the requisite temperament for
> such restraint is not usually inherent in viable, ambitious,
> presidential aspirants.)
>
> You’re right to condemn Carter on
> deregulation and Clinton on NAFTA (and CAFTA), and you could
> add Clinton’s signing off on the gutting of Roosevelt’s
> reform of investment banking. But Clinton and the Dems
> did raise taxes in 1993 (without one Republican vote), which
> brought budget surpluses and a temporary halt to our
> downward slide into horrendous debt. Can we call that
> successful effort just another facet of the “more
> effective evil” of these sly Democrats?
>
> And remember, too, the historic pressure
> on Democrats to take on something of the coloration of
> conservatism, as the 60-or-so-year political pendulum swing
> began to turn rightward after the upheavals of the
> 1960s. Just as Dewey, Eisenhower, and even Nixon
> weren’t all that conservative by today’s standards (they
> had to go a bit with the zeitgeist, as well), a turn toward
> the center was perhaps inevitable for a Democrat to get
> elected president in the 1990s. Let’s shift some of
> the blame to global trends and conditions, while we’re at
> it. (Doesn’t that make me a respectable, orthodox
> postmodernist?)
>
> As for making Elizabeth Warren part of
> this “axis of political evil” you reference, give me a
> break. Talk about pressure to wink at Israel’s
> “crimes” in Gaza: It’s far stronger even than not
> treating Iraq as a wasteful, mendacious misadventure in
> which our troops died “in vain.” I don’t think I
> need to go into all the reasons why. The word
> “Holocaust” serves as a good start.
>
> Let’s pull this discussion back toward
> Burke before we invoke a reprimand. I spoke of the
> power of the scapegoat mechanism that even a Burkean
> “comedian” can’t totally ignore. Let me add that
> my initial post on “trivial repetition” and “dull,
> daily reinforcement” points in the direction of a
> rhetorical dilemma I have not yet explored: How can a
> political leader without a death wish repeat and repeat and
> repeat again a position on the issues I think need to be
> highlighted, when those accusations will indict virtually
> everybody, all the usual suspects having dirty hands to one
> degree or another? We may need something along the
> lines of, “Choosing a Rhetoric of the Enemy: Kenneth
> Burke’s Comic Frame, Warrantable Outrage, and the Problem
> of Scapegoating, Part II.”
> Herb’s “Requirements, Problems, and
> Strategies” quandary comes to mind.
>
> As tightwad Jack Benny, when confronted
> with the challenge, “your money or your life,” after a
> long pause, would say: “I’m thinking, I’m
> thinking.”
>
>
> Ed
>
>
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Thu, 9/18/14, HERBERT W. SIMONS <hsimons at temple.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Subject: Re: [KB] "Trivial Repetition," "Dull, Daily
> Reenforcement"
> To: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Cc: kb at kbjournal.org
> Date: Thursday, September 18, 2014, 7:55 AM
>
> very
> perceptive. YES, there's a pattern here.
>
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at
> 4:13 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> wrote:
> At 84
> I've given up out-living the Age of Neoliberalism. One
> of my reasons for this glum conclusion is the
> preponderance among men and women of good will of the
> views
> expressed by Ed Appel below, which he nicely summarizes in
> the following words: ". . . what’s happen, by
> DELIBERATE policy on one side of the aisle, and culpable
> acquiescence on the other, to USAmerican jobs, USAmerican
> taxation, and USAmerican debt. . . ."
>
>
>
> This is, I fear, the standard liberal understanding of the
> Democratic Party: They see that party as
> "opportunist," "cowardly," even
> "stupid." They fail to see that the DP is, as Glen
> Ford of Black Agenda puts it, "The More Effective
> Evil." It is the DP, primarily, that has determined
> U.S. policy over the last half century. (Consider the
> analogy to "Good Cop / Bad Cop." It is the Good
> Cop (the DP) who does the real damage. Three acts by the
> Carter Administration marked the all-out assault on the
> working people of the U.S.:
>
>
>
> 1) Carter's virtual signing of of Bishop Romero's
> Death Sentence
>
> 2) The Deregulation of Air lines and trucking
>
> 3) The appointment of Volcker as Fed Chairman
>
>
>
> Subsequent administrations have but filled in the dots.
> Some
> of the high poits:
>
>
>
> Reagan's crushing of PATCO
>
> Clinton's pushing through of NAFTA
>
> Clinton's Effective Death Penalty and Anti-Terrorism
> Act
>
> Unanimous Congressional Approval of Afghanistan and Iraq
> aggressions
>
> Senator Warren's aggressive support of Israel War
> Crimes
>
>
>
> As to Obama, he richly exemplifies Noam Chomsky's
> observation that "War Criminal" is part of the job
> description of U.S. presidents.
>
>
>
> Ed is certainly correct that no Left exists in the U.S.
> Earmarks of a hypothetical Left:
>
>
>
> 1. Liquidate the Prison System
>
> 2. Withdraw all U.S. troops from the world
>
> 3. No U.S. Foreign Aid (it is all open or disguised
> military
> aid to tyrannies)
>
> 4. Open Borders. No human is Illegal.
>
>
>
> Carrol
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: kb-bounces at kbjournal.org
> [mailto:kb-bounces at kbjournal.org]
> On Behalf Of Edward C Appel
>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 1:58 PM
>
> To: wessr at onid.orst.edu
>
> Cc: kb at kbjournal.org
>
> Subject: Re: [KB] "Trivial Repetition,"
> "Dull, Daily Reenforcement"
>
>
>
> Bob and All,
>
>
>
> Your list for “trivial repetition and dull,
> daily reinforcement” by the left would be as good as
> mine. Maybe we could start by taking a cue from Teddy
> Roosevelt, much on the agenda at PBS the last three
> nights. TR comes across as a ridiculous,
> I’m-altogether-right-and-you’re-altogether-wrong,
> heroism-obsessed blowhard in some ways, but as also a
> great
> man, great leader, and great egalitarian spirit, as
> well.
> (Not perfectly egalitarian, for sure, but wondrously so
> for
> his time.)
>
>
>
> Roosevelt’s mantra about the Constitution
> being for the good of the people as a whole, rather than
> vice versa, a strait jacket into whose supposedly tight
> 18th-century constraints all contemporary common sense has
> to be bound, should be our guiding principle, too (see
> Burke
> on the “Dialectic of Constitutions,” GM).
>
>
>
> The first question I’d ask, though, is,
> where
> do we find the USAmerican political “left? I know one
> place I can find the left-wing US commentariat. See the
> amalgam of voices gathered together on CommonDreams.org,
> for
> instance. But among our political leaders? Maybe
> Warren
> and Sanders, but even Sanders echoes Obama on the taxation
> question: The wealthy ought to be paying “a little bit
> more.” A LITTLE bit more? When their contribution to
> the commonweal has gone from 51 percent of earnings 60
> years
> ago to about 16 percent today, less than the average
> middle-class earner? When average CEO pay has burgeoned
> from 40 to 1 to 400 to 1 in respect to average salaries in
> a
> given industry in the past three to four decades? When a
> candidate for the presidency can get away with disclosing
> one, and only one, tax return, at 13 percent (!), and
> still
> run for that highest and supposedly exemplary office, and
> get away with it?
>
>
>
> I don’t see much of a “political left”
> in
> our nation, or much of a sense of what a “political
> left” should look like, among our citizenry. (See
> Donald
> Barlett and James Steele, The Betrayal of the American
> Dream, for requisite numbers; see Thomas Frank, What’s
> the
> Matter with Kansas, on how Democrats have become only
> “marginally better” than Republicans; see a study by
> Martin Gilens [Princeton] and Benjamin Page [Northwestern]
> on how “’the preferences of the average American
> appear
> to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically
> non-significant impact upon public policy,’”
> [“Disease
> of American Democracy,” Robert Reich, 8/21/14], as the
> result of the takeover of political outcomes by
> Congress’s
> and the executive’s corporate paymasters.)
>
>
>
> But, if we had a “political left” of some
> dimensions (let’s fantasize!), what would be the three
> most salient issue-positions I’d recommend a strong,
> repetitive, dull, daily emphasis upon? It would be the
> two
> I recommended in “Democratic Narrative” and in my post
> on the nefarious Iraq War, to wit:
>
>
>
> Drum home “agaaaiiinnn and aggaaaiiinnn and
> agaaaiiinnn” (I can hear FDR exclaiming it!) what’s
> happen, by DELIBERATE policy on one side of the aisle, and
> culpable acquiescence on the other, to USAmerican jobs,
> USAmerican taxation, and USAmerican debt, over the last
> three and a half decades. American jobs have been
> exported
> to low-wage sweat shops in Asia, Indonesia, Mexico, and
> beyond, to the economic benefit of the entrepreneurial
> class, who can then sell their products to consumers
> worldwide. They don’t need Americans to make their
> goods, nor do they need them as much to buy their goods.
> Manufacture cheap and sell across the globe. You lose
> your
> high-paying factory job as a result? Go work for
> McDonalds!
>
>
>
> And while we’re at it, let’s cut taxes to
> the bone. “Starve the beast!” As Reagan insiders
> Donald Stockman and Bruce Bartlett have revealed, the idea
> was to cut taxes to such an extent, and run up deficits so
> onerous, Congress and some future administration would be
> forced to dismantle the “welfare state.” George W.
> Bush admirably followed suit, at the outset of his dubious
> war, no less!---and there’s reported evidence on things
> that Bush privately said that indicate he was just as
> deliberate. (See Venomous Speech: Problems with American
> Political Discourse on the Right and Left, pp. 109-116,
> for
> ample documentation.)
>
> Democrats left fingerprints over all of this
> chicanery, as well.
>
>
>
> Who’s got clean-enough hands to pound home
> this narrative, repeatedly, in our day, and the political
> courage to boot?
>
>
>
> More, later, on the other two mantras, and how
> Heath and Heath might simplify the tale---and on the
> "identification" angle.
>
>
>
>
>
> Ed
>
>
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------
>
> On Mon, 9/15/14, wessr at onid.orst.edu
> <wessr at onid.orst.edu>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> Subject: Re: [KB] "Trivial Repetition,"
> "Dull, Daily Reenforcement"
>
> To: "Edward C Appel" <edwardcappel at frontier.com>
>
> Cc: kb at kbjournal.org
>
> Date: Monday, September 15, 2014, 9:58 PM
>
>
>
> Ed, Burke is surely right
>
> about the power of repetition. The
>
> advertising industry leaves no room for doubt about
> that.
>
>
>
> What
>
> identifications might the left try to repeat ad
> nauseam?
>
>
>
> What might Burke advise?
>
>
>
> Bob
>
>
>
> Quoting Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com>:
>
>
>
> > Burkophiles,
>
> >
>
> > I asked in a
>
> chapter in Praeger’s Venomous Speech last year,
> “Where
>
>
>
> > Is the Democratic Narrative, FDR
>
> Style?” That piece had mainly to
>
> >
>
> do with the polemical malfeasance of the Dems in
> dealing
> with, > rhetorically pretty much ignoring, what
> globalization has done to > aggravate the income gap
> in
> USAmerica the past three and a half > decades.
> (Tax
> policies are culpable, too, we know, in multiple >
> ways.) Senator Warren appeared on Moyers on PBS last
> Sunday. She > listed four Democratic proposals
> she
> thinks are winning issues going > into the Fall
> elections. Moyers asked her why, then, aren’t we
> >
> hearing more about them from Democratic candidates and
> their > spokespersons? Warren really had no good
> answer.
>
> >
>
> > Burke says in
>
> the Rhetoric (p. 26), “Often we must think of >
> rhetoric not in terms of one particular address, but as
> a
> general > BODY OF IDENTIFICATIONS that owe their
> convincingness much more to
>
>
>
> > trivial repetition and dull daily
>
> reenforcement than to exceptional
>
> >
>
> rhetorical skill” (emphasis in original).
>
> >
>
> > I monitor Fox
>
> News daily. That propaganda network masquerading as
> > a news channel (I know, we can say the same thing
> about MSNBC) is > near-fanatically repetitive in
> promoting its conservative,
>
>
>
> > anti-Obama agenda. Fox is
>
> relentless. Case in point: Bill O’Reilly > has
> invidiously targeted the President in his opening
> “memo” for as > many nights as I can
> remember.
> Another: Wish I had even one dollar > for every
> time
> I’ve watched our consulate in Benghazi burn on my
> > Channel 48. They don’t let up.
>
> >
>
> > Add this mantra to the list: Bush 2
> “won” our righteous “War on > Terror” with
> the surge in Iraq. Obama came into office, took our
> > troops out of that country, and now has “lost”
> a
> war that Bush, > Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz
> had
> brought a U.S. victory and peace > to!
>
> >
>
> > The
>
> rhetorically inept, more accurately altogether missing,
>
>
>
> > response by Obama in his “leading
>
> from behind” speech on Wednesday,
>
> >
>
> and in his fumbling precursors to that address, are
> dispiriting.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> First and foremost, Obama was and is uniquely
> situated to > characterize the Iraq War for what it
> plainly was: A mendacious > military adventure,
> foisted
> on USAmerica by subterfuge and > deception, a
> cynical exploitation of the shock of 9/11, not merely a
>
>
>
> > “dumb war.” Fifteen Saudis and
>
> four Egyptians, under the leadership
>
> >
>
> of a wealthy Saudi, trained in Afghanistan, highjacked
> four > commercial jetliners and perpetrated the
> mayhem of that frightful > day. Saddam, we knew
> even
> then, had nothing to do with it. Nor did > his
> chemical weapons, if they even had existed and they
> didn’t, nor > did his so-called “mushroom
> cloud” potential, pose any real threat > to this
> nation. Again, we knew even then that Iraq’s
> nuclear
> > ambitions, even if real, were as yet no more than
> hope, if not > fantasy. And, for anyone paying
> attention, the Bush-Cheney > fear-mongering had
> already been shot down in an op-ed in the NYTimes >
> by Ambassador Wilson, and by clear-headed reporting
> > by the McClatchy News Service.
>
> >
>
> > So, what happened after waste of a
> trillion
> dollars (it will be > three trillion or more after
> medical expenditures are exhausted a > half-century
> from now), loss of thousands of American lives, tens
> of
> > thousands of maimings and woundings, and
> destruction
> and shattering > of this jerry-built nation of
> warring sects that only a tyrant like > Saddam could
> hold together—what happened after the candidate who
> > promised to end the Iraq War came to power? He
> stopped calling the
>
>
>
> > war what it really was and started
>
> treating it pretty much like a
>
> >
>
> somewhat legitimate enterprise we had to bring to an
> end
>
>
>
> > “responsibly.” Obama was even
>
> planning to keep fifty thousand (or
>
> >
>
> was it eighty thousand?) troops in Iraq in perpetuity,
> before > al-Maliki said “no way”
>
> to our insistence on military immunity. > (And
> Obama
> doesn’t even defend himself on that issue.) >
> >
>
> You may object that Obama had to metamorphose into
> a “war > president,” since he was then
> Commander-in-Chief. Can’t in any way > imply that
> our soldiers died in vain in a conflict subversively
> > motivated by oil, Israel, Bush family
> score-settling,
> or plans for > victorious re-election in 2004 by a
> flight-jacketed president after > “Mission
> Accomplished.”
>
> >
>
> > Upshot: There exists a corrupt
>
> context to what Obama and USAmerica
>
> >
>
> face in the current chaos of the Middle East. It is
> a
> context that > requires repetition and more
> repetition still by leadership that has > some
> semblance of the near-self -destructive insanity of
> America’s > vaunted “War on Terror.” As he
> takes us into yet another phase of > this
> resource-draining, quick-sand tugging, tar-baby of a
> conflict, > someone with a megaphone has to stand
> up
> and shout down the McCains > and Foxies who current
> occupy the rhetorical terrain uncontestred.
>
> >
>
> > I have no hope that Obama’s the
>
> one.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Ed
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> > KB mailing list
>
> > KB at kbjournal.org
>
> > http://kbjournal.org/mailman/listinfo/kb_kbjournal.org
>
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
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>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
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>
>
>
> --
> Herbert W.
> Simons, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of
> Communication
> Dep't of Strategic
> Communication, Weiss Hall 215
> Temple
> University, Philadelphia 19122
> Home phone:
> 215 844 5969
> http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
> Academic Fellow, Center for Transformative
> Strategic Initiatives (CTSI)
>
>
>
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>
--
Dr. Clarke Rountree
Chair and Professor of Communication Arts
342 Morton Hall
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL 35899
256-824-6646
clarke.rountree at uah.edu
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