On June 15, 2020 the Supreme Court released a decision that will have major historical significance and implications, and if we’re going to say that we are all about how rhetoric functions in the real world, this is as big as it gets. This is legal rhetoric making real, lasting change in people’s everyday life. So we want to take a few minutes to look at the arguments in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia and what they say and how they are built. Because this has real life implications for some dear friends of ours. Probably yours, too. [Read More]
Episode Nine – What Is History? A Confederate Story
If you’re not from America, the Confederate memorial controversy must seem really confusing. The Confederacy was the losing side of our Civil War. They were the traitors. The bad guys. They were the ones defending slavery. They’re pretty indefensible. And yet we’ve got monuments to them all over the US and military bases named after them and parks dedicated to them – there’s this heroic narrative about the traitors who lost the Civil War that you just don’t have in other countries. [Read More]
Does Oratory Matter?
Donald Trump is easily the worst speaker who has ever held the office of the President of the United States. His syntax and vocabulary is juvenile, he can’t keep a train of thought going, and when he DOES rely on a pre-written speech they are generally hyperbolic and terrible. He is, quite simply, a terrible speaker. [Read More]
Episode Eight – The Silent Majority
If you are one of our international listeners (we’re pretty clearly based in the U.S.) you may have looked at what’s been going on in America for the last few weeks and wondered “What the actual hell?” We cannot seem to get our crap together. We completely screwed up our response to the coronavirus leading to unparalleled death and contagion, our economy collapsed in the face of our delayed and poorly executed and planned response, and now we find ourselves in a state of civil unrest in response to years of racial tension and police brutality with our leadership calling the military on its own citizens and evidence of state violence against its own people pouring in from EVERYWHERE. This is not our finest hour. [Read More]
Episode Seven – “Law and Order” and #BlackLivesMatter
It is interesting to note that the two presidents in the modern era that have been most invested in the rhetoric of “law and order” have been the most lawless and corrupt Presidents. Nixon and Trump were both elected on “law & order” platforms, but both struggled with ethics and legal violations throughout their presidencies. This just emphasizes that “law and order” rhetoric has little to do with maintaining any kind of organization and is really coded rhetoric for oppressing marginalized communities. “Law and order” has long been recognized as “dog whistle” politics that is really a message to supporters that a candidate will engage in as many suppressive tactics and policies as possible. [Read More]