Status Updates From The Rhetorical Presidency: ...
The Rhetorical Presidency: New Edition (Princeton Classics) by
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Esteban del Mal
is 96% done
Donald Trump repeatedly and successfully depicts his own imaginary political world and demands that we...live within it, no matter how fantastical his claims, how false his understanding, or how awful his political vision...Absent a new and robust civic education, common sense, felt experiences, and the residue of historical memory may be the remaining defense against the degradation of democracy in America.
— Mar 29, 2019 05:55PM
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Esteban del Mal
is 96% done
The people he speaks to in his inaugural address (and especially in later speeches, including his rally in Florida one month into his term) are his followers, a subset of the American people as a whole that he invests with the authority of the whole people, the People who authorize the Constitution. Trump then uses his constructed people—his made-up, regime-authorizing people—as authority for himself.
— Mar 29, 2019 05:51PM
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Esteban del Mal
is 94% done
…demagogues nurture a powerful connection with their own supporters, and if such support is sufficient to win an election, the faction supporting the demagogue is invested with the authority of the people as a whole. The enthusiasm of a faction is represented as the will of the people.
— Mar 29, 2019 05:40PM
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Esteban del Mal
is 94% done
Trump proliferated his outrage, repeated his claims incessantly, and projected his vices onto his opponents. These techniques—proliferation, repetition, and projection—transformed what would be gaffes or mistakes in other hands into the constitutive elements of his victory.
— Mar 29, 2019 05:39PM
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Esteban del Mal
is 78% done
Constitutional government…has become a kind of government by assembly without a genuine assembling of the people. In this fictive assembly, television speaks to the president in metaphors expressive of the “opinions” of a fictive people, and the president responds to the demands and moods created by the media with rhetoric designed to manipulate popular passions rather than to engage citizens in political debate.
— Mar 27, 2019 05:57PM
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Esteban del Mal
is 78% done
…surveys are at odds with the idea of representative government as it appears in The Federalist: representative government attempts by popular authorization to create scope to govern; surveys have the effect (if not the intent) of closing this space. Surveys create pressure on governments to produce immediate results, sooner even than the next election.
— Mar 27, 2019 05:55PM
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Esteban del Mal
is 75% done
The steep decline in constitutional speech...as well as the dramatic decline of structured argument more generally, suggest that the rhetorical presidency also marks an increasing inability of governors and governed alike to talk intelligently about the basic principles that define the regime.
— Mar 27, 2019 05:36PM
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Esteban del Mal
is 37% done
...“Andrew Johnson was essentially a stump speaker rather than a polished orator.” His effectiveness depended on a continual “communion with the audience,” an interplay with hecklers, and the spiritedness and vitality characteristic of effective extemporaneous talk. Nothing could be further from the founders’ intentions than for presidential power to depend upon the interplay of orator and crowd.
— Mar 19, 2019 05:44PM
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Esteban del Mal
is 37% done
...Johnson would begin by disclaiming an intention to speak...claim his own devotion to the principles of Union, deny that he was a traitor...attack some part of the audience, defend his use of the veto, attack Congress as a body and single out particular congressmen, compare himself to Christ...and finally conclude by declaring his closeness to the people and appealing for their support.
— Mar 19, 2019 05:38PM
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Esteban del Mal
is 34% done
Stressing the need to make his pronouncements on “proper” or authoritative occasions, Lincoln recognizes the need to rest his authority on the Constitution rather than upon raw popular will. For popular will is transient, and may be the object upon which authority might have to be brought to bear.
— Mar 18, 2019 08:07PM
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