Conservative Political Rhetoric

Demagoguery and jingoism are modes used by Republican politicians and their consultants to appeal to voters. These tricks simplify issues and substitute slogans and vapid labels for ideas and for a pragmatic sense of reality. They shut down thinking, which shuts down conversation, which shuts down democracy. After William F. Buckley’s heyday, we descend back again to Rush Limbaugh and the rest. Regarding the way mainstream Republican operatives operate and the way their electoral base responds, Trilling had it mainly right when he said, “[T]he conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” These pseudo-ideational “irritable mental gestures” are on prominent display this time around with the ever-reliable “liberal” label, ignoring subtleties of Obama’s plans such as tax cuts for the middle class, and in talk about “victory” in Iraq, which David Petreus himself specifically derides as an inappropriate term to use in the context of Iraq. When on a Sunday-morning news interview show McCain’s top campaign aide was called on his use of the term by being referred to Petreus’s statement, he totally ignored the general’s statement and continued to bang home the term. The strategy is that of totalitarian propaganda: if you forcefully say it often enough, it will become the common wisdom. This is profoundly disrespectful of the public and of the principles of democracy, which depends on rational debate in which words are used meaningfully and fairly in order to hash out differing points of view and persuade a majority on the merits of an argument over best ways to serve self- and common-interest. A particular shame is due to such political operatives and candidates, but also due to those citizens who buy these goods. It is demagoguery and jingoism parading as principle and patriotism. The press and more-rational citizenry should call the perpetrators on this stuff more frequently and vigorously.