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DaveSZ
When The Levee Breaks
Registered: Jan 2003
Location: ATX
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 Apr-15-2004 14:15 
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Renegade
____________/
Registered: May 2001
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
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I caught a reply of this conference on Fox News, and I can't really add much to what's been said. It was a fairly dull and unenlightening affair, and I think we can all say with a bit more certainty that Bush lacks tact and struggles severely when forced to deviate from prepared remarks. However there is one thing I want to add:
| quote: | | did anybody notice how he only vaguely answered each question, the ranted on the same subject for five minutes after each question?? instead of answering the questions directly he averted to ranting on n on on freedom and how the iraqki people wont be abandoned, blah bla blah war on terror.. |
That was one of the things I noticed as well. Many of you may remember >this< topic from a while back, where I showed how members of the Bush admin (especially Bush and/or Rove) were quite adept at co-opting specific "meritorious" principles and agendas (like democracy, freedom, liberty and so on) by saturating their speeches with references to these concepts. I invoked the phrase "if you repeat a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it" to demonstrate that if you can strategically align yourself (and your actions) with such benevolent principles by constantly affirming your commitment to them (by, as I say, literally "saturating" speeches with such references) then people may begin to see you as a great defender or believer in these principles, regardless of what your actions may suggest to the contrary.
Keeping this in mind, while Bush is undeniably slow-witted and linguistically inept, he has been trained well in these techniques (and much of the credit for this must, of course, go to Karl Rove). In his speech, for instance, despite it being short and relatively light on rhetoric (for this administration at least) he managed to use the words "free" or "freedom" 17 times, in all but two cases referring specifically to the "freedom" of Iraqi state (the other two referred to "middle-eastern freedom" and "global freedom" more generally). With the word "free" brandished so liberally, and the words "Iraq" and "freedom" never far apart it's obvious that Bush and/or Rove is trying to ingrain a certain belief into the mind of the viewers, not through logic but through almost subliminal repetition - "forget the WMD, forget the deaths, forget the national chaos: Iraq is free. The Iraq people have freedom. Saddam is gone. The Iraqis are free. Freedom in Iraq. We liberated them from Saddam. They are free."
Nonetheless, it's when Bush is left to fend for himself in question time that the quality of the training becomes apparent. What this basic vocabulary list does is give Bush a position to fall back on when he lacks the nuance (or pre-requisite knowledge?) to properly address a question posed to him by a reporter. If in doubt, just throw one of these concepts, whether they're relevant or not. Don't answer the question, vaguely defer to something emotionally laden, but ill-defined to the point of meaninglessness. The ambiguity of the term "freedom" means that it can be employed in a different way in a variety of different contexts. It can be used over and over again, giving the impression of grandeur and substance where there is none. Several quotes, for instance, appear to have been rote-learned to give a certain emotional (yet decidely vague) impact to what he was saying (go have a read of what he was saying and note what percentage you'd heard him - or anyone else in the administration say - before, almost word-for-word).
However, it's worth nothing that the lexicon appears to have shifted. While the words free and freedom were still being exploited to an almost comical degree (and additional 33 times in question time - making 50 times all up) the other favourite words of previous speeches - "democracy" and "liberty/liberation" - appeared just once and twice respectively. As the election looms ever closer there seems to be a much greater emphasis on terms like "threat/threats" (employed 23 times - not once was it used in conjunction with the term "prevention"), "danger/dangerous" (employed 8 times), and "terror/terrorism/terrorists" (employed 32 times - always generally, rarely referencing a specific event or person). On the other side of this, he also used the terms "security/security" (employed 26 times, excluding references to the UNSC and the Homeland Security Department) and "protect/protection" (employed 9 times). I think it's clear that this sort of rhetorical shift (away from a commitment to "liberty" and "democracy", towards the claim that the US in constant - yet unspecified - danger) is a reaction to the failure of the US to bring order (let alone "democracy") to Iraq, and the notion that in the face of turmoil - real or imagined - a population is always likely to stick with the status-quo. If you can't convince people to vote for you on the merits of your policies, at least make sure they're too scared to vote for anyone else:
| quote: | With a defiant "We are not afraid" stance, President George W. Bush has dismissed the natural response to terrorism while tacitly making fear the basis of his politics.
[...]
Using the battle cry of a "war on terrorism" and stubbornly insisting that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," the Bush administration is not about to surrender the tactical advantages of an anxious public being told repeatedly that it is trapped in a war with no end-point. |
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion...oints-headlines
As I said before, I believe this is only the start. As the election draws near we will hear more about the "terrorists" (not named specifically - only invoked as a general threat) who "threaten" (in what way we will never be told) our "freedom" (whatever "freedom" means) and against whom we must be "protected" (in what way we will not be told specifically) by employing the "security" (specific policies will not be mentioned) that only George Bush and his friends can provide. Now while this "culture of fear" is nothing new, it does mark something of a shift from the quiet, rhetorical optimism (about the spread of liberty, democracy, stability, freedom and so forth) that started to permeate the language of the administration leading up to and following the Iraq war. If Iraq doesn't get better, though, and American troops continue to be brought home in body bags, then expect this rhetorical shift to become even more pronounced, and expect a campaign heavy on the rhetoric of fear, low on the ennunciation of specific security policies. So long as people fail to see the difference between the two, however, this has a good chance of being successful.
But I guess we shall see. :-/
___________________
http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/
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Apr-16-2004 10:41 
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MisterOpus1
Grumpy Old Fart
Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Kansas City
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| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
I caught a reply of this conference on Fox News, and I can't really add much to what's been said. It was a fairly dull and unenlightening affair, and I think we can all say with a bit more certainty that Bush lacks tact and struggles severely when forced to deviate from prepared remarks. However there is one thing I want to add:
That was one of the things I noticed as well. Many of you may remember >this< topic from a while back, where I showed how members of the Bush admin (especially Bush and/or Rove) were quite adept at co-opting specific "meritorious" principles and agendas (like democracy, freedom, liberty and so on) by saturating their speeches with references to these concepts. I invoked the phrase "if you repeat a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it" to demonstrate that if you can strategically align yourself (and your actions) with such benevolent principles by constantly affirming your commitment to them (by, as I say, literally "saturating" speeches with such references) then people may begin to see you as a great defender or believer in these principles, regardless of what your actions may suggest to the contrary.
Keeping this in mind, while Bush is undeniably slow-witted and linguistically inept, he has been trained well in these techniques (and much of the credit for this must, of course, go to Karl Rove). In his speech, for instance, despite it being short and relatively light on rhetoric (for this administration at least) he managed to use the words "free" or "freedom" 17 times, in all but two cases referring specifically to the "freedom" of Iraqi state (the other two referred to "middle-eastern freedom" and "global freedom" more generally). With the word "free" brandished so liberally, and the words "Iraq" and "freedom" never far apart it's obvious that Bush and/or Rove is trying to ingrain a certain belief into the mind of the viewers, not through logic but through almost subliminal repetition - "forget the WMD, forget the deaths, forget the national chaos: Iraq is free. The Iraq people have freedom. Saddam is gone. The Iraqis are free. Freedom in Iraq. We liberated them from Saddam. They are free."
Nonetheless, it's when Bush is left to fend for himself in question time that the quality of the training becomes apparent. What this basic vocabulary list does is give Bush a position to fall back on when he lacks the nuance (or pre-requisite knowledge?) to properly address a question posed to him by a reporter. If in doubt, just throw one of these concepts, whether they're relevant or not. Don't answer the question, vaguely defer to something emotionally laden, but ill-defined to the point of meaninglessness. The ambiguity of the term "freedom" means that it can be employed in a different way in a variety of different contexts. It can be used over and over again, giving the impression of grandeur and substance where there is none. Several quotes, for instance, appear to have been rote-learned to give a certain emotional (yet decidely vague) impact to what he was saying (go have a read of what he was saying and note what percentage you'd heard him - or anyone else in the administration say - before, almost word-for-word).
However, it's worth nothing that the lexicon appears to have shifted. While the words free and freedom were still being exploited to an almost comical degree (and additional 33 times in question time - making 50 times all up) the other favourite words of previous speeches - "democracy" and "liberty/liberation" - appeared just once and twice respectively. As the election looms ever closer there seems to be a much greater emphasis on terms like "threat/threats" (employed 23 times - not once was it used in conjunction with the term "prevention"), "danger/dangerous" (employed 8 times), and "terror/terrorism/terrorists" (employed 32 times - always generally, rarely referencing a specific event or person). On the other side of this, he also used the terms "security/security" (employed 26 times, excluding references to the UNSC and the Homeland Security Department) and "protect/protection" (employed 9 times). I think it's clear that this sort of rhetorical shift (away from a commitment to "liberty" and "democracy", towards the claim that the US in constant - yet unspecified - danger) is a reaction to the failure of the US to bring order (let alone "democracy") to Iraq, and the notion that in the face of turmoil - real or imagined - a population is always likely to stick with the status-quo. If you can't convince people to vote for you on the merits of your policies, at least make sure they're too scared to vote for anyone else:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion...oints-headlines
As I said before, I believe this is only the start. As the election draws near we will hear more about the "terrorists" (not named specifically - only invoked as a general threat) who "threaten" (in what way we will never be told) our "freedom" (whatever "freedom" means) and against whom we must be "protected" (in what way we will not be told specifically) by employing the "security" (specific policies will not be mentioned) that only George Bush and his friends can provide. Now while this "culture of fear" is nothing new, it does mark something of a shift from the quiet, rhetorical optimism (about the spread of liberty, democracy, stability, freedom and so forth) that started to permeate the language of the administration leading up to and following the Iraq war. If Iraq doesn't get better, though, and American troops continue to be brought home in body bags, then expect this rhetorical shift to become even more pronounced, and expect a campaign heavy on the rhetoric of fear, low on the ennunciation of specific security policies. So long as people fail to see the difference between the two, however, this has a good chance of being successful.
But I guess we shall see. :-/ |
Very astute analysis of linguistics, Renegade.
___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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Apr-16-2004 14:27 
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