- As Harvey Drowns Houston, Trump Struggles to Contain Himself | Vanity Fair – Who knew leadership could be so HARD! Cultural tourism can be so tedious. Especially at a distance. Look to the sequence of statements.
> Since the rain began falling, however, Trump has struggled to respond to the first natural disaster of his presidency with anything other than contrived seriousness at best, morbid fascination at worst.
> “Record setting rainfall,” Trump observed, before quickly getting in a plug for a friend’s book. “Many people are now saying that this is the worst storm/hurricane they have ever seen. Good news is that we have great talent on the ground,” he noted. “Wow – Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood! We have an all out effort going, and going well!” – (rhetoric politics trump )
- What authoritarianism experts think of Trump’s decision to pardon Joe Arpaio – – (authoritarianism politics trump power )
- notes very necessary || Barbara Bridger & J. R. Carpenter – > Notes Very Necessary is a collaboratively authored web-based multi-media essay that aims to addresses climate change by remixing images, text, and data generated by centuries imperialist, colonialist, capitalist, and scientific exploration in the Arctic. The title is borrowed from an essay authored in 1580 by the Englishmen Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman offering detailed instructions on how to conquer new territories by taking copious notes. In 2015 Barbara Bridger and J. R. Carpenter attempted to follow these instructions by making, finding, and faking notes, images, data, and diagrams online and reconfiguring them into a new narrative. – (DH digitallierature en3177 WCW mapping psychogeography )
Tag Archives: Politics
What I’m reading 18 Aug 2017 – 24 Aug 2017
- President Trump Shares Anti-Obama Eclipse Meme | Time.com – Semiotic misfire. Language is bigger than we are.
> The President's opponents are not above just this kind of semiotic misfire. – (meme semiotics erhetoric )
- Daring Fireball: Wading Through AccuWeather’s Bullshit Response – Be aware. But be aware of the rhetorical moves of the companies that appear to grant privacy. – (privacy en3177 rhetoric )
- The Week When President Trump Resigned – The New York Times – Once more into the rhetorical situation – how Trump deals with the social demand for speech.
> On Tuesday he “relinquished what presidents from Roosevelt to Reagan have regarded as a cardinal duty of their job: set a moral course to unify the nation,” wrote The Times’s Mark Landler, in what was correctly labeled a news analysis and not an opinion column. Landler’s assessment, echoed by countless others, was as unassailable as it was haunting, and it was prompted in part by Trump’s perverse response to a question that it’s hard to imagine another president being asked: Did he place the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., on the same “moral plane” as those who showed up to push back at them?
> A soft coup against a cuckoo: It confirmed how impotent Trump had become. – (trump politics rhetoric rhetorical_situation )
What I’m reading 16 Aug 2017 – 17 Aug 2017
- Donald Trump’s Crisis of Legitimacy | The New Yorker – > “Trump is using the precious capital of the bully pulpit to talk about confederate monuments in between savage attacks on fellow Republicans,” Holmes, the former aide to McConnell, told Politico Playbook. “Just think about that. Not tax reform. Not repeal and replace. Not North Korean nuclear capabilities. No focused critiques on extremely vulnerable Democrats who have opposed him at every possible turn.” – (trump politics rhetoric )
- Trump’s ‘On Both Sides’ Press Conference: A Key Image – The Atlantic – Spoken words are authentic words, right? – (politics rhetoric trump )
- President Trump must go – The Washington Post – Significant because it doesn’t call for Trump's resignation. – (trump politics rhetorical_situation )
What I’m reading 14 Aug 2017 – 15 Aug 2017
- Donald Trump, from His Tower, Rages at “the Other Side” in Charlottesville | The New Yorker – Raging against the light. > he had reduced a moral crossroads for the country to a question of naming rights. Standing in front of reporters, Trump came across as an angry man sheltered by a building bearing his own name in big, gold letters. But for how long? Tenants in some buildings have already asked to have the “Trump” taken off. Where would it stop? Would there, perhaps, never even be a statue of Donald J. Trump? – (trump politics rhetoric )
- In 1939, I didn’t hear war coming. Now its thundering approach can’t be ignored | Harry Leslie Smith | Opinion | The Guardian – Specters. Not to be taken lightly.
> I recognise these omens of doom. Chilling signs are everywhere, perhaps the biggest being that the US allows itself to be led by Donald Trump, a man deficient in honour, wisdom and just simple human kindness. It is as foolish for Americans to believe that their generals will save them from Trump as it was for liberal Germans to believe the military would protect the nation from Hitler’s excesses. – (history politics trump )
- Why is Trump reluctant to condemn white supremacy? It’s his racism — and his megalomania. – The Washington Post – More consideration of the rhetorical situation of Trump's Many Sides statement.
> There is a reason we generally want our presidents to speak out against racism against African Americans amid outbreaks of racial strife and violence. They are well positioned to remind the nation of our founding creed, and of our most conspicuous betrayal of it — of the historically unique experience of African Americans as targets of centuries of violent subjugation, as well as sustained domestic terrorism and deeply ingrained racism, which continues today. – (rhetoric trump rhetorical_situation )
What I’m reading 13 Aug 2017
- White House Acts to Stem Fallout From Trump’s First Charlottesville Remarks – The New York Times – The press does rhetorical analysis. – (trump persuasion rhetorical_situation )
- Donald Trump under fire after failing to denounce Virginia white supremacists – This account makes it clear that Trump mis-used the rhetorical moment. Didn't just miss the opportunity to condemn white supremacists but used it to normalize racism. This is not a rhetorically innocent move.
> The president said he condemned “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” on Saturday. He then repeated the phrase “on many sides” for emphasis. A White House spokesperson later amplified the president’s remarks, telling the Guardian: “The president was condemning hatred, bigotry and violence from all sources and all sides. There was violence between protesters and counter-protesters today.”
> But there was strong reaction to Trump’s refusal to denounce far-right extremists who had marched through the streets carrying flaming torches, screaming racial epithets and setting upon their opponents. – (politics efficacy trump rhetoric rhetorical_situation )
- Trump lit the torches of white supremacy in Charlottesville. We must extinguish them. – The Washington Post – Trump tries to take naming out of debate. The conservatives make it the center of debate – by declaring the name is not open for debate.
> But this abomination that happened in Charlottesville over the weekend is not up for debate. It’s not a cultural take or a political platform. Racism, bigotry and terrorism in the name of white nationalism isn’t a “side.” It’s a poison. – (rhetoric trump categorization naming )
What I’m reading 12 Aug 2017
- Trump babbles in the face of tragedy – The mainstream is raising the specter of Nazism
> this is the natural result of defining authenticity as spontaneity. Trump and his people did not believe the moment worthy of rhetorical craft, worthy of serious thought. The president is confident that his lazy musings are equal to history. They are not. They are babble in the face of tragedy. They are an embarrassment and disservice to the country.
But
> Ultimately this was not merely the failure of rhetoric or context, but of moral judgment. The president could not bring himself initially to directly acknowledge the victims or distinguish between the instigators and the dead. He could not focus on the provocations of the side marching under a Nazi flag. – (rhetoric politics trump )
- Donald Trump’s incredibly unpresidential statement on Charlottesville – – (politics rhetoric trump )
- Yes, Smartphones Are Destroying a Generation, But Not of Kids | JSTOR Daily – A fair analysis of a popular argument – critiquing the evidence- but weak alternative argument and lame solution. The kids aren't sad, it's the parents, so let's mentor! – (argument a )
What I’m reading 25 Jul 2017 through 31 Jul 2017
- Depravity Is Downstream of Donald Trump – The Atlantic – > Andrew Breitbart himself thought Donald Trump was a con man and no conservative, but he doubtlessly would have enjoyed the showmanship and sheer disruption of Trump’s primary campaign. – (trump rhetoric politics )
- [toread] The Observer view on Donald Trump’s unfitness for office – Your sixth month diagnosis: vipers, clowns, being held hostage
> Like some kind of Shakespearean villain-clown, Trump plays not to the gallery but to the pit. He is a Falstaff without the humour or the self-awareness, a cowardly, bullying Richard III without a clue. Late-night US satirists find in this an unending source of high comedy. If they did not laugh, they would cry. The world is witnessing the dramatic unfolding of a tragedy whose main victims are a seemingly helpless American audience, America’s system of balanced governance and its global reputation as a leading democratic light. – (politics trump tragedy )
- Donald Trump Tramples on Boy Scout Values | The New Yorker – Best Accidental Trump. Parable. Ever. – (none)
What I’m reading 17 Jul 2017 through 25 Jul 2017
- Here and now – Thinking … I’ll get back to you on it. – (none)
- Trumpcare Collapsed Because Republicans Cannot Govern – Republican ideology doesn't admit support for health care. It's not conservatism. It's Republicanism.
> In truth, it was never possible to reconcile public standards for a humane health-care system with conservative ideology. In a pure market system, access to medical care will be unaffordable for a huge share of the public. Giving them access to quality care means mobilizing government power to redistribute resources, either through direct tax and transfers or through regulations that raise costs for the healthy and lower them for the sick. Obamacare uses both methods, and both are utterly repugnant and unacceptable to movement conservatives. That commitment to abstract anti-government dogma, without any concern for the practical impact, is the quality that makes the Republican Party unlike right-of-center governing parties in any other democracy. In no other country would a conservative party develop a plan for health care that every major industry stakeholder calls completely unworkable.
> The power to destroy remains within the Republican Party’s capacity. The power to translate its ideological principles into practical government is utterly beyond its reach. – (ideology rhetoric politics )
- Defense of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop offers case study on how to sell snake oil | Ars Technica – A catalogue of some of the rhetorical moves on Goop. – (ecommerce erhetoric snakeoil persuasion )
What I’m reading 8 Jul 2017 through 15 Jul 2017
- David Bromwich · The Age of Detesting Trump · LRB 13 July 2017 – > President Trump, monster and scapegoat, is too rash in his overall demeanour, too uncalibrated in his words and gestures, too ill-adapted to the routines of politics to carry credit even when he is speaking common sense. – (none)
- Trump is ushering in a dark new conservatism – The real nostalgia is for the 1930s, not the 50s. – (politics trump )
- Full Text, Analysis: Donald Trump Jr. Emails On Meeting With Lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya : NPR – Annotation is the new broadcast. – (politics discourse trump )
- “I’ve Made You Believe There Is a Point” | ACADEME BLOG – TED Talks. Simply boring? Or simply boring platform for bogus Thought Leaders, self-promotion, and wasted lives? – (none)
What I’m reading 26 Jun 2017 through 6 Jul 2017
- Trump’s dangerous thirst for a clash of civilizations – The Washington Post – Trump the Colonialist. It suits you, sir. – (politics colonolialism trump )
- Noam Chomsky: On Trump and the State of the Union – The New York Times – > ridicule is not enough. It’s necessary to address the concerns and beliefs of those who are taken in by the fraud, or who don’t recognize the nature and significance of the issues for other reasons. If by philosophy we mean reasoned and thoughtful analysis, then it can address the moment, though not by confronting the “alternative facts” but by analyzing and clarifying what is at stake, whatever the issue is. Beyond that, what is needed is action: urgent and dedicated, in the many ways that are open to us. – (trump politics philosophy_as_action )
- [toread] Amy Collier – Exploring Digital Sanctuary – OFFICE OF DIGITAL LEARNING – – (none)