<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4257"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4258">Burkophiles,<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4259"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4260"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4261"> Hillary
Clinton’s current coulda-woulda-shoulda book raises questions about Burke’s
notion of the symbolic “arpeggio.” That’s the passage in discourse, as in
music, where the harmonious “comic” chord develops gradually. The discord of a factionally
tragic or melodramatic response to an exigence may be required initially. The
rhetor will still retain the comic attitude toward the errant other, but will
resort to necessary “heroic euphemism” to blunt the effect of the verbal
“warfare” she or he confronts (<i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4262">ATH</i>
344). Congruent with this interpretation, Burke additionally vouchsafes that,
“By proper discounting, EVERYTHING becomes useable” (<i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4263">ATH</i> 244). Burke offers this
modification of his dramatic genre of choice in the book that most directly deals
with dramatic genres, literary and rhetorical.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4264"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4265"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4266"> Greg
Desilet and I dealt with this issue on the level of a full-scale shooting war,
as in World War II, in our essay, “Choosing a Rhetoric of the Enemy.” Our
exemplar was Franklin D. Roosevelt, a factionally tragic orator on December 8,
1941, who shifted toward comic rhetorical notes toward enemy nations as the
fighting neared resolution. As Burke conceded, “A comic vocabulary of motives,
we admit, cannot be attained insofar as people are at war, or living under the
threat of war” (<i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4267">ATH</i> 344). Comic drama does not mobilize effectively
enough when a nation is mortally threatened.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4268"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4269"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4270"> Earlier
this year, I argued on this list that the presidential campaign rhetoric of
Donald Trump, 2015/2016, was generically irregular, heightened in dramatic
intensity to burlesque-frame levels in respect to other Republicans and
Democrats not named Clinton, and to factionally tragic levels against Clinton
in the general. Trump twice even suggested it might be a good idea that Clinton
be assassinated. (Let’s get rid of her bodyguards’ guns and “see what happens’;
if Clinton wins, maybe the “Second Amendment people” can take care of her.)<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4271"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4272"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4273"> After
the balloting, Richard Cohen in the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4274">Washington
Post</i> chided Clinton for her “too civilized” concession speech, considering
the viciousness of Trump’s “lock her up,” “crooked Hillary” rhetorical
demeanor.throughout the campaign. Cohen’s criticism was likely too abridged.
Clinton failed to adequately challenge Trump’s incessant calumnies head-on from
day one. Trump’s verbal warfare, raised to unprecedented heights in modern
presidential campaigning, required at least a melodramatic counter-punch on
Clinton’s part. She let him define her with savage exaggeration, mendacity, and
repetition. Clinton’s overly cautious---and we might add craven---unwillingness
to turn around and call Trump the “creep” he patently acted like, in this case during
one of the debates, might have cost her the election. You can’t counter tragic
invective with comic niceties and expect victory in a zero-sum contest like a
presidential election. Comedy will work for a Gandhi and a King in a
far-different reform-movement setting. It does not, and did not, work for
Clinton in 2016.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4275"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4276"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4277"> The
comic attitude toward Trump could readily have been taken and summoned at the
appropriate moment. Comedy places the blame on responsible circumstances, not
guilty persons. Trump surely evinces narcissistic personality disorder. Anyway,
he ACTS like a person so afflicted. We don’t need a psychiatrist to tell us
that after a series of sit-downs with Trump in a clinical setting. Just look at
the symptoms of narcissism in <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4278">DSM 5</i>
(or is it <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4279">DSM 6</i>?). Name one that
Trump’s behavior doesn’t fit? Treat Trump’s unsatisfactory language and actions
as “scenically” motivated, activated by neurostructures and neurochemistry over
which he has little or no control. <o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4280"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4281"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4282"> An
appropriate time would have arrived when Clinton could have properly forgiven
Trump for acting like Trump.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4283"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4284"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4285"> As Ann
George offered at the end of her keynote, what do you think?<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4286"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4287"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4288"><o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4289"> </o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4171">
</div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4290"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4291"> Ed <o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505406446505_4292"></o:p></span></div></div></body></html>