blissfullyunwed:
Despite the partisan nature of the graphic heading this entry, I’m not here to throw a grown-up temper tantrum about how my party is always right and your party is always wrong – although, to be fair, I may have been guilty of that crime a time or… yeah. But not today, because, today, I’m here to wax profound on the subject of political rhetoric.
Whichever party you support, you almost certainly understand that Liberal and Conservative political public figures alike utilize their own very distinct brand of narrative as a filter for the information they disseminate to the public. Accusations of Right Wing loud-mouthery aside, the above graphic is actually a quite accurate representation of one of the most compelling indicators of the stark differences between America’s Democratic and Republican parties: their varient rhetorical practices.
Because my job as a graphic artist often causes my love for the English language to go unrequired, I derive a bordering-on-inappropriate amount of pleasure from analyzing the way that subtle but incredibly meaningful linguistic cues that usually go unnoticed and unexamined can either unify or polarize groups of people, more often than not without their knowledge. Under a microscope, the carefully-crafted rhetoric of both the Democratic and the Republican parties reveals the strings that are meant to be pulled to gain the support of audiences. This rhetoric also tells us, if we are willing to see, the parties’ greatly-varied priorities.
In both parties, there are certain words that are used more widely and frequently than others. For example, Conservatives employ words like “tradition,” “family values,” and “sanctity” to appeal to their target audience. It’s not enough to simply identify the technical meanings of words like these; in order to suss out what they reveal about their users, you have to figure out what meaning has been assigned to them by their speakers. Those meanings, the ones that you can’t find in a dictionary, serve the purpose of disrobing the true beliefs and intentions of their speakers. Broadening the scope to the way in which important words are used on both sides of the aisle reveals fundamental differences between both factions of our two-party system.
One such loaded adjective is the word “progressive.” In right-wing punditry, its connotation is generally negative, used by speakers to draw the attention of their listeners toward threats toward conservativism. Conversely, in its liberal incarnation, “progressive” is used positively and less ambiguously, generally to describe social improvement through adaptation.
With their use of the word “progressive,” both parties stray from its everyday, dictionary-approved definition, adding their own connotations in order to get their message across. For example, although progression is associated with forward movement, which is generally viewed positively, “The progression of the disease has not slowed.” Still sounds pretty grim. Be that as it may, though, there is no avoiding the fact that the Conservative use of “progressive,” as the signifier of traditional abandonment and moral decay, wanders significantly from the real-life meaning of the word than its slightly-adjusted Liberal counterpart.
These differences in rhetoric do not exist in a vacuum. Although speech can certainly influence thought (we wouldn’t be takling about political rhetoric right now it it couldn’t), it nearly always works the other way around: as a reflection of the views of the speaker, or, in the case of uniform use of the word by a group, the commonly-held views of that group.
That Liberal public political figures skewed the meaning of the word “progressive” to fit their party’s agenda is a sign that both parties do hold a certain bias. But what we’ve seen here has implications reaching far beyond Republicans playing significantly faster and looser with the English language than their Democratic counterparts. This eschewment of a word that has nearly turned it to its opposite is a huge a red flag, marking the trend in Conservativism toward complete abandonment of reliance on facts to guide ideas and decisions.
That Right Wing leadership is inclined to blatantly deny reality should not even be a matter of dispute anymore. Pushing abstinence-only sex ed, attempting to bar women from obtaining birth control and safe, legal abortions, Paul Ryan’s untruth-riddled vice presidential nomination acceptance speech - hell, the Romney/Ryan lie-a-minute presidential campaign in its entirety, the overwhelming amount of evidence supporting the fact that global warming is fucking real - how do Republican party members not see that they’re being duped?
Here’s why I chose that graphic: Republican politicians are able to shove lie after lie down the throats of their constituency without so much as a peep of resistance, because they do not appeal to their supporters’ logical minds.
Think about it: family values, the Founding Fathers, patriotism, freedom - these vague and highly manipulable terms are used to evoke emotion, not rational consideration. Once you call upon your listeners’ sense of obligation to God, country and family, and then tell them that the other guys (you know, those mean, mean scientist and fact-checkers) do not support those values, you’ve won. You’ve won because, now, no matter how sensible a suggestion may be, if your supporters have been conditioned to view the suggester as a morally-inept threat to their families, their religious beliefs and their country, they won’t listen.
Think I’m wrong about this? If you do, you probably also won’t believe that, among viewers of major news networks, the patrons of any given network were no more likely to be misinformed about current events than the patrons of the next. That is, with the exception of Fox News. Regular Fox News viewers were more likely to hold incorrect opinions than viewers of any other channel, including MSNBC, whose viewers weren’t more likely to harbor incorrect opinions than anyone else. Except Fox viewers, of course. Why did I bother saying this?
So, next time you’re tempted to throw your hands up and say, “Fuck it. Both parties are biased and disingenuous.” Remember this: although corruption touches all areas of politics, there is only one side that will not adapt with America as it grows and changes and faces new threats and challenges. Remember also, while you’re at it, that the party with the ability to evolve to meet the needs of Americans is not the party to whom “evolution” is a dirty word. See? Rhetoric can tell you a lot.
Image Source: Liberals Are Cool, via Liberal Mama.
O lookee, another troll in the conservative tag. Let’s take this apart shall we?:
One such loaded adjective is the word “progressive.” In right-wing punditry, its connotation is generally negative, used by speakers to draw the attention of their listeners toward threats toward conservativism. Conversely, in its liberal incarnation, “progressive” is used positively and less ambiguously, generally to describe social improvement through adaptation.
With their use of the word “progressive,” both parties stray from its everyday, dictionary-approved definition, adding their own connotations in order to get their message across. For example, although progression is associated with forward movement, which is generally viewed positively, “The progression of the disease has not slowed.” Still sounds pretty grim. Be that as it may, though, there is no avoiding the fact that the Conservative use of “progressive,” as the signifier of traditional abandonment and moral decay, wanders significantly from the real-life meaning of the word than its slightly-adjusted Liberal counterpart.
This is the only part I find genuinely intriguing in this post. It is also largely correct in that terms like progressive has different connotations depending on the political leanings of the user. However the OP failed to mention that the term progressive was originated in the early 1900s when the turn of the century progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson started nationalizing the country for the sake of “progress”. The left was forced to abandon the term when the progressives became politically linked to fascist Italy and they co-opted the term Liberal which used to mean Libertarian and still does in much of the world. It is only recently that the left has returned to the term progressive which in a political atmosphere means tending towards large government.
Think about it: family values, the Founding Fathers, patriotism, freedom - these vague and highly manipulable terms are used to evoke emotion, not rational consideration. Once you call upon your listeners’ sense of obligation to God, country and family, and then tell them that the other guys (you know, those mean, mean scientist and fact-checkers) do not support those values, you’ve won. You’ve won because, now, no matter how sensible a suggestion may be, if your supporters have been conditioned to view the suggester as a morally-inept threat to their families, their religious beliefs and their country, they won’t listen.
Think about it: mother earth, pollution, do it for the children, Universal Health Care - these vague and highly manipulable terms are used to evoke emotion, not rational consideration.
Think I’m wrong about this? If you do, you probably also won’t believe that, among viewers of major news networks, the patrons of any given network were no more likely to be misinformed about current events than the patrons of the next. That is, with the exception of Fox News. Regular Fox News viewers were more likely to hold incorrect opinions than viewers of any other channel, including MSNBC, whose viewers weren’t more likely to harbor incorrect opinions than anyone else. Except Fox viewers, of course. Why did I bother saying this?
Yeah no, just no. This 2 year old survey has already been roundly debunked by politifact of all people: Link
So, next time you’re tempted to throw your hands up and say, “Fuck it. Both parties are biased and disingenuous.” Remember this: although corruption touches all areas of politics, there is only one side that will not adapt with America as it grows and changes and faces new threats and challenges.
Yup and sadly it is the party currently in the White House. The Democrats have been recycling the same policies since Wilson. I think it’s time to find solutions that work and don’t just devastate the economy.
Remember also, while you’re at it, that the party with the ability to evolve to meet the needs of Americans is not the party to whom “evolution” is a dirty word.
Once again you are confusing social conservatism with political conservatism, they aren’t the same. I hate to tell you this, but there are a lot of social conservatives in the Democrat party and quite a few socially liberal conservatives, like me. Not to mention most churches have no problem with the concept of evolution. This is a point of view projected onto the right by the left.
See? Rhetoric can tell you a lot.
Yes it can.
A conservative political blog, with some libertarian leanings, written by me The-Dapper-Dreamer. In this blog I combat the liberal lies with logic and facts aka weapons of mass liberal destruction. I also reblog quite a bit of Red Eye.