Tag Archives: rhetorical_velocity

What I’m reading 9 Feb 2017 through 19 Feb 2017

  • Donald Trump and the Enemies of the American People – The New Yorker – How to define the enemy as anyone who challenges power

    > an old-fashioned autocrat wielding a very familiar rhetorical strategy.

    > all follow a general pattern. They attack and threaten the press with deliberate and ominous intensity; the press, in turn, adopts a more oppositional tone and role. “And then that paves the way for the autocrat’s next move,” Simon told me. “Popular support for the media dwindles and the leader starts instituting restrictions. It’s an old strategy.” Simon pointed to Trump’s lack of originality, recalling that both Néstor Kirchner, of Argentina, and Tabaré Ramón Vázquez, of Uruguay, referred to the press as the “unelected political opposition.” And, as Simon has written, it was the late Hugo Chávez who first mastered Twitter as a way of bypassing the media and providing his supporters with alternative facts. – (rhetoric politics trump )

  • Donald Trump Will Leave You Numb – The New York Times – I can't recall the rhetorical figure of "repeat until exhausted." Too tired. But this is also about kairos: "Not by accident did he put on that 77-minute performance for the media — hurling insults, flinging lies, marinating in self-pity, luxuriating in self-love — just three days after the resignation of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and amid intensifying questions about collusion between Team Trump and the Russians.
    "He was cluttering the landscape. Overwhelming the senses. Betting that a surfeit of clangorous music would obscure any particularly galling note. That wager got him all the way to the White House, though he has no place being there, and so he sticks with it. The news conference was a case study in such orchestrated chaos." – (rhetoric rhetorical_velocity kairos exhaustion simuations analysis )
  • Understanding Trump « George Lakoff – – (none)

What I’m reading 21 Jun 2016 through 28 Jun 2016

  • And the Pulitzer goes to… a computer | Technology | The Guardian – Journalism stories compiled by algorithm – a lot like procedural poetry. – (DH )
  • [priv] How My “Disarm Hate” Slogan Went Viral (A Lesson in Network Communities and Networks, Part I) – For erhet fall 2016 – (erhetoric rhetorical_velocity )
  • Trump: The Clickbait Candidate – How might digital rhet address this? A fourth office? Spectacle?

    > The thing to remember here is that the act of measuring a process also changes that process. Analytics send a signal to journalists and their editors. In this instance, the signal is that Trump brings in way more traffic than Bush, Cruz, Walker, Clinton, Sanders, or Carson. And this signal then helps guide their news routines — people seem to want more Trump, so let’s give it to them.

    > digital media does not only provide alternative means for people to speak; it also creates new pathways for organizations to listen. We have grown accustomed to looking at digital media as an alternative to traditional media. … Trump’s victory didn’t come about because he bypasses the media through Twitter. It is because he uses Twitter (and press conferences) to create a media spectacle, and media organizations, carefully monitoring their own analytics, respond with blockbuster coverage. – (analysis rhetoric erhetoric )

What I’m reading 2 May 2015 through 5 May 2015