Commentary
Bush’s cornpone sophistry
By Charles M. Ashley
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Jun 8, 2006, 00:45

James Moore and Wayne Slater introduce the first chapter of their book about Karl Rove, Bush’s Brain, with the following quotation from the ancient Athenian philosopher Plato [1]: "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

It’s a powerful way to start a book about possibly the most effective and infamous political deceiver that has ever lived. For Plato understood well the problems such deceivers cause democracies.

In The Republic, Plato is quite critical of democracy, implying that it is tantamount to mob rule. The Athenian government executed Plato’s mentor Socrates because the gadfly of Athens had allegedly corrupted the Greek city state’s youth by teaching them to think for themselves and to question their political leaders and their religion. (Most Athenians of the time were religious conservatives.) Influential leaders resented the Socratic method of logical analysis because it exposed their fallacious rhetoric and called into question their leadership. The leaders therefore trumped up the charge of sedition against Socrates. Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon accused Socrates of being "a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other new divinities of his own." The most famous of all philosophers was tried on this charge, convicted, and then forced to commit suicide by drinking hemlock.

Plato believed that the sophists -- itinerant teachers who taught any subject for a price -- had corrupted the Athenian democracy by teaching the politicians to appeal to the masses through rhetorical trickery, which has become known as sophism. Facts and logic weren’t important to the politicians. They weren’t after truth; they just wanted to win elections. The sophists, who prided themselves on their ability to make evil appear good and wrong look right, taught the politicians how to score cheap verbal points; how to move crowds with spurious arguments, various logical fallacies, and appeals to ignorance, greed, fear, and prejudice. Sound familiar?

The 2,400-year-old episode of Socrates’ trial (399 BCE) and execution and the reasons for it are of interest to U.S. citizens because of the unfortunate similarities between the democracy of Plato and Socrates’ Athens and our own republican form of so-called democracy.

With respect to how we practice democracy, human nature has not changed. The same verbal tricks work on the modern mob, and modern mass media have given modern sophists all sorts of new ways to implement sophistry. Now our “representatives” can deceive us with video images as well as words. And our politicians often seem to be in a race to find the newest way to con the masses. I’m not going to say that only the Republicans do it. Democrats and Greens and politicians of every party do it. Right here in California, I’ve seen plenty of smear tactics in the Democratic gubernatorial campaign. What I will say is that the Republicans have discovered, for the moment, the most effective form of sophistry to appeal to the masses. That’s why they’ve gotten away with stealing the last three national elections.

Before I go any further, something must be said here at the beginning about George Lakoff, who has painstakingly analyzed how the Republicans have used the technique of "framing" issues. Lakoff argues that the language used to “frame” an issue largely determines the parameters of debate on an issue. I will take a somewhat different but related tack in the following analysis of modern political sophistry.

Also, I should point out that the Republicans’ domination of the public relations con game is clearly weakening as I write this. Certainly Bush and the Republicans in Congress are suffering in the polls. Their domination is weakening because their incompetence is unraveling their false rhetoric, secrecy, and lies; because of -- there are simply too many scandals to list -- the exposure of the Plame affair, the Downing Street memos, and above all the war in Iraq.

Nevertheless, an analysis of just how the Republicans have used sophistry to "win" is necessary for two reasons: (1) so that when and if we liberals regain control of government, we will not fall ill to the same disease and (2) so that we can cure the cancer that has invaded the body politic and elect honest leaders.

The most ingenious aspect of the Republican strategy was to cull out a certain group of voters to appeal to. The Republicans’ thinking is pure Madison Avenue, the very same kind of anything-goes amorality that sells us toothpaste and automobiles. It is all about markets and target groups. We are bombarded with the nonsense of commercial ads from childhood. We complain and criticize, and yet these ads influence us in ways we are hardly conscious of. The science of marketing has developed subtle strategies to outflank our reasoning by appealing to our sexuality, our emotions, our vanity, our prejudices. Moreover, our educational system -- lagging behind the politicians and big business -- obviously has not adequately addressed the problem of how to bolster these defenses. The marketers have been so successful that they have changed us from citizens into mere consumers.

Both major parties conduct marketing surveys and polling to determine how to appeal to various social groups. They then develop strategies based on their findings. But again, the Republicans have done a better job lately. This may be because they have the corporations on their side. After all, the best marketing strategists and ad-makers work for the big corporations, which benefit from aggressive foreign policy such as the so-called “war on terrorism.” The very same people who make the commercial ads make political ads and develop political strategies. Here the Republicans probably have an advantage because they are naturally closer to big business. But these guys work for the Dems, too -- if the Dems can come up with the money. So the Dems are corrupted, too, just in case they might somehow get into office and the bad boys need some leverage. It is the perfect marriage of convenience between big business and politics.

In any case, the Bush regime identified the working class and religious conservatives as target audiences they needed to appeal to and developed a strategy to appeal to this audience. It should be obvious by now, for example, that George W. Bush was chosen to run because he could play the role of a fundamentalist Christian and appeal somewhat more generally to people who identify themselves culturally with working class conservatives. All of these folks, by the way, are not in the ranks of the working poor. Far from it. I know many such people around my area, and they have plenty of money. Many are small business people, building contractors and such. The important point is that they are culturally working class. They talk like working class people. They act working class. They like working class food -- steak and spuds, not that fancy-smancy Frenchified froufrou. They like working class entertainment. They have working class values, which may or may not include fundamentalist Christianity.

Our nation is politically divided, and along with the political divisions come linguistic divisions. If you’ve ever watched CNN for a while and then switched over to Fox to see how the other half thinks, you’ve noticed it. Along with the tacky, glitzy style of Fox -- it’s rather like getting the news from Anna Nicole Smith -- there is a distinct difference in language. You notice it in Hannity’s in-your-face style. Unlike his counterpart Colmes, who is always calm and rational and safe, Hannity will stop at nothing. His language is the language of the working class. It is monosyllabic and direct. It is the language of the construction site. It is the language of constant attacks on liberalism. He goes for the jugular. Hannity is a little bantam rooster, Irish street-fighting kid all grown up now and dressed up in an expensive business suit. In fact, he’s a gang leader, and he uses street cons on his audience, roughing up his opponent with “gotcha” lines and smears to impress the little kids gathered 'round to watch the fight.

Watching Hannity and Colmes is a little like watching a Punch and Judy show. The writers and producers have a talent for appealing to their audience. They put in something for everybody, even the liberals. Hannity of course is the star, and Fox knows that most of the audience is interested in what he has to say. But liberals get their licks in too, although I doubt the side cheering Hannity ever notices. What they mainly want to see is Hannity beating up on a liberal, really raking the liberal over the coals with lots of one-liner cheap shots and personal smears. Hannity is not exactly subtle, and he is not meant to be subtle. His audience wouldn’t notice anyway.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with simple, direct language. The problem is that Hannity doesn’t hesitate to use red herrings, non sequiturs, and personal smears as knives to cut up an opponent in a debate. The operative point here is that while plain speech suggests honesty, it can be the vehicle of dishonesty as easily as any other kind of speech. The conventional wisdom is that more complex language -- the language of John Kerry for instance -- language that contains more polysyllabic words, more complex sentence structures, more abstractions -- is more deceptive and that less complex language is less deceptive. I’m not sure of the origin of this belief that is widely held among the working class -- maybe lawyers and politicians who have traditionally preyed on the working classes. In any case, it is clearly erroneous. But since this is so widely believed, simple language -- the simple language of George Bush -- can be and is used as the vehicle for deception.

The Republicans have curried a certain kind of down-home, cornpone rhetoric, which carries with it the commonsensical ethos of plain speech, but in reality is anything but plain speech. It is in fact a new form of sophistry. We all remember how many times George W. Bush said "hard work" during the debate. To me and the rest of the local Kerry supporters watching at our debate party, Bush’s awkward repetition was hilarious. We could hardly stop laughing. We all knew the patrician Bush had never worked an honest day in his life. Naively, we toasted sweet victory. Little did we know: among working class and small-business conservatives, this awkwardness was a winner.

It is now a truism that the symbolism of down-home authenticity is one reason Bush purchased his Crawford Ranch. On his frequent visits there, he is sure to pose for photo ops wearing Levis, big belt buckle, and stockman’s hat, pretending to work, clearing brush, driving an old pickup truck. According to Paul Waldman, “Before a press conference in August 2002 at the Bush estate in Crawford, Texas, workers brought in hay bales to cover up the propane tanks sitting in camera view, the better to give the impression that the president was a real old-time rancher.” I would dearly love to learn how the ranch was paid for and whether any campaign funds were used in the purchase. But the details of the purchase have never been disclosed. In any case, this imagery of ranching and “hard work” support Bush’s simple and awkward rhetoric.

Bush’s challenge "Bring ‘em on!" made to Iraqis at the beginning of the resistance (July 2, 2003), is perhaps the most infamous example of Bush’s one-liners in the “verbal points” scoring category of sophism. The quondam Andover cheerleader is good at such one-liners. This one scored well among working class conservatives, who always are itching for a fight of one sort or another. Many of the conservatives I know here in the conservative mini-Bible-belt in the Sierra foothills of eastern Fresno County, California, cheered the expression. These folks have been spoiling for a fight against all the “furriners” -- “A-rabs” and the wine-swilling, cheese-eating French that “hate” our country. They’d like to “nuke” them. Seriously, they’d like to nuke them. On the other hand, many on the left called Bush’s challenge inciteful. We know now -- after more than two years of the Iraqi resistance -- that the critics were right, yet these “fightin’ words” worked well among the “base” when it counted. They are still working for the 30 percent that still support Bush, the 30 percent who remind one of the Nazis who continued fighting for Hitler when all that remained of the Third Reich was a few blocks of rubble in Berlin.

Bush will not hesitate to go to his cornpone bag of tricks when he’s in trouble or when the Republican Party is in exigency, as it currently is. That is why the president called for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as limited to “one man and one woman” and why he is now calling, along with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, panderer supreme, for Congress to pass a law against flag-burning. These are obvious sops to the ultra-conservative -- some might call it fascist -- base.

Even when Bush fumbles a cornpone-ism, it works for him among this part of the “base,” in which case the word carries more than one meaning. At a campaign speech in Tennessee, Bush said, “There's an old saying in Texas. It's probably in Tennessee, but I know it's in Texas: Fool me once . . . shame . . . shame on you . . ." Then el presidente de falsas palabras hesitated. Something told him he’d got it wrong, but he couldn’t tell why. After all, he’s not terrifically logical. It didn’t matter. It worked even better because of the flub. To the “base,” the foibles and fumbles are endearing, making Bush more of a regular guy, more authentic.

For this very reason I believe certain instances of what have come to be known as Bushisms are actually planned. Such malapropisms as “misunderestimate” and “strategery” fall into this category. These are reassuring music to the ears of people who regularly mispronounce or mix up polysyllabic words, saying for example “prostrate” when one means “prostate,” “irregardless” instead of “regardless,” or “esculate” instead of “escalate.” I can imagine Rove, Bush, and the speechwriters laughingly dreaming up new cornball coinages. I know I’d have fun doing it.

The following is a letter sent to a tiny newspaper published in eastern Fresno County, which is culturally a million light-years from the big cities of California:

If the debate of creation is between scientists, I would like to know the name of the scientists who can explain why animals in the wild no longer interbreed. You can say anything you want, the reality is that animals do not interbreed; they never have, because there are no mutants. And even when one breed is artificially inseminated with a different type of animal, they don’t produce offspring, or the offspring cannot produce offspring, thus no future offspring. Duh!

Clearly the writer is not well educated. She obviously has utterly no clue about evolution or any of the world-shattering discoveries in genetics over the past 60 years. All she knows about evolutionary theory is that it threatens her over-simplified and erroneous worldview. One wonders how she graduated high school, but she probably did. I can virtually assure you that the editor corrected spelling and sentence structure. The editor has explained to me that she must almost always heavily edit the conservatives’ letters, correcting spelling and sentence errors. (And yet the editor, a religious conservative herself, sees no connection between poor writing skills and poor thinking skills and what it might imply about the political behavior of working class and religious conservatives.) People like this writer have been called “stupid” all their lives, so they are thrilled to have a president who seems just as intellectually and verbally challenged as they. It reassures them and gives them a sort of hope.

Their support for Bush and the Republicans is also a matter of spite. They can gloat that Bush’s election [sic] is pay back to their more intellectually accomplished liberal fellow citizens who have always looked down on them. Spite is one important reason Bush holds at 30-35 percent approval ratings in the polls. One might think that the revelation of all the lies and deception would by now have pulled him down much further. Nothing could be further from the truth. The working class people I know are quite willing to put up with lies, with illegal wiretaps, with torture of prisoners. Heck, they’d like to do some torturing themselves, and to a liberal if they can’t get hold of a "terrorist." The Republicans consciously appeal to this working class spite, referring to “latte-slurping” elitists or “brie eating” liberals.

People such as the letter writer -- and there are millions of them across this country -- are suckers for the old standby appeals to xenophobia and hatred. Mention gay rights, gay marriage or flag burning and their eyes glow red. When the going gets tough for Republicans, as it is now, they can be depended on to drag out the old dependables, as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) did just the other day in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace. Frist, who is considering a presidential run, has been buttering up the Christian Right with appearances at Justice Sunday and by making a hopeful diagnosis via TV of Terry Schiavo. Having to downplay his support of the compromise immigration bill, Frist trotted out threats to introduce bills to ban gay marriage and flag burning. Senator Frist, with all due respect, has got to be one of the cheapest and most obvious panderers since the infamous senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy.

According to Eric Alterman and Mark Green,

Sometimes the president seems to think that vagueness, nonsequiturs, and tautology are enough to explain away his political problems. How long will there be an American presence in Iraq? -- “As long as necessary but not a day longer.” Did you get where you are because of your famous father? -- “I love my dad.” Drugs as a youth? -- “When I was young and reckless, I was young and reckless.” Is war with Iraq really a last resort? -- “When I say I’m a patient man, I mean I’m a patient man.” It is sad to say about our democracy, but this nonsense often works. [2]

It is not only sad to say that such nonsense works. Even sadder are the reasons why it works. One reason is the spite factor. Bush’s extreme right base is reactionary, and, as such, many of them derive great satisfaction merely seeing the left defeated even if they must accept that the leaders they support haven’t enough personal honor and integrity to be truthful. I’m not entirely convinced that all of them are fooled by these fallacies. What really tickles them is that Bush is audacious enough to utter them so boldly and that they are effective, falsehood notwithstanding.

Not all Bush’s supporters are stupid enough to fall for such cheap pandering. Some are shrewd and cynical. Curtis White of the Village Voice describes our current form of government as a “sotoligarchy,” an alliance between the rich and powerful -- the oligarchy -- and the politically stupid -- the sots. The oligarchs clearly haven’t got enough votes among their several thousands to win elections. Yet their interests are generally different from most citizens’ interests. So how do they win elections and get what they want?

The oligarchs understand in their cynical way that the great strength of democracy -- that the majority rules -- may also be its greatest weakness. Majorities are not always right. Indeed, it is entirely possible that they may more often be wrong. (And please, I don’t want to hear about how right and wrong are relative terms. Anyone who calls what the Bush administration and the Republicans have done in the last few years “right” needs to have his or her head examined.) Nevertheless, majorities can, with shrewd technique, be manipulated. And the Republicans have done a damn fine job of manipulating.

The problem with democracy, obviously, is that all that matters is that one gets the most votes. Plato knew it; we know it. Those casting these votes don’t have to be wise. They don’t have to be intelligent. They don’t have to be discerning. They can be nearly brain-dead. They don’t have to know anything about whom or what they are voting for. All they have to do is get to the polls and cast a vote. A precinct captain can collect them and herd them onto a bus to get them there.

Politicians on both sides have known since the time of the first democracy in Athens that all one has to do is get more votes -- get there firstest with the mostest. They have always understood that it doesn’t really matter how one gets the mostest. In 1988, an ad featuring furloughed murderer Willy Horton worked for George H. W. Bush against George Dukakis. In 1964, an ad featuring a mushroom cloud and little girl worked for Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater. Such sophistry works even on Congress. In 1991, Bush Senior created a lie about Kuwaiti babies murdered at the hands of Iraqi soldiers, and even hired the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter to play the lead in the little immorality play before the U.S. Senate. The Senate fell for it and authorized Bush to go to war. Similar tricks persuaded Congress to authorize the latest misadventure in Iraq. Like father, like son. Bush pere didn’t pay for his crime. Will Bush fils? I doubt it. We just want to move on -- on to the next lie and the next horrendous mass murder.

Even the honest politician -- now there’s an oxymoron for you! -- in order to win is forced into the Hobson’s choice of employing dishonest means to achieve honest ends. And then -- in for a penny, in for a pound -- it’s a slippery slope down to the bottom slime with the rest of the guttersnipes.

One problem with democracy is that it doesn’t come naturally. Real honest to goodness democracy is not primarily an intuitive or instinctive form of government. It requires close examination of facts. It requires logic. It requires knowledge. It requires vigilance. Above all, it requires an electorate that understands and appreciates these requirements. Therefore, it requires an educational system designed to teach students this necessary knowledge and also teach a healthy skepticism. Questioning the system must be valued in a democracy.

The founders understood this. That is why they placed The First Amendment first. It is first because it is most important. Democracy is simply impossible without the healthy catharsis made possible by the First Amendment and by a press willing to hold the light of truth up to government -- to speak truth to power.

The effect of capitalism on the press is inimical to democracy. In a capitalistic system, sadly, the press must be so concerned about selling advertising and papers that their obligation to speak truth to power becomes diluted and weakened.

We need not only fear losing our democracy. We need to fear fascism. We are now -- no question -- a fascist state. Fascism is perhaps man’s default government -- the kind of government Homo sapiens (what a misnomer) was born to on this planet so many eons ago -- the government of tribes and clans. Fascism is instinctive. It is based on the innate tendency to band together, especially in times of exigency, to gather around symbols and icons. In fascism, loyalty is paramount; in democracy truth and fact are infinitely more important than loyalty.

Loyalty is of course important in democracy, but it is only important once the facts have been carefully analyzed and evaluated and the truth has been established. Loyalty must be subordinate to truth.

It couldn’t be clearer now how important the truth and openness are to the Republicans and the Bush administration. These values are NOT IMPORTANT to them. We have seen them -- time after time -- sacrifice the facts and the truth for the loyalty of thieves.

The solution is education -- real education that teaches students to think logically and see the sham. Collectively, we blame politicians for the dishonesty which has gradually eroded our democracy to the point that it is merely camouflage hiding a virulent fascism.

Yet the fact of the matter is that the politicians are dishonest because we the people allow them to be dishonest. We continue buying the products and services sold to us in the commercial ads that make profits for the media and pay reporters’ salaries.

Americans have known about the problem of political sophistry at least since McLuhan’s influential work in the 1950s and 1960s. Anyone who ever seriously read Plato knew about it long before McLuhan. And yet our educational system has not adequately addressed the problem. We all take for granted that education is supposed to prepare us for life, and yet it clearly doesn’t do so with respect to providing us with defenses against the sophistry of marketing of all sorts, both political and commercial. I believe that perhaps the most important role of government is to protect people against enemies, both external and internal. Certainly, those who con us are our enemies -- those who con us into buying things we don’t need, who fool us into supporting wars which do not protect us but in reality only provide a new commercial opportunity for big business. And yet the government does not provide the wherewithal so that our educational system can teach us to defend ourselves against their sophistry.

One is tempted to conclude there is a conspiracy between the government and the commercial interests in this country to con us. It is now a truism among liberals that big business and big government are no longer separate and have melded into Big Brother and fascism. Can it be that one reason government no longer provides adequately for education is that those who wield the real power want to keep us dumb?

Notes:

1. James Moore and Wayne Slater, Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, John Riley and Sons, Inc. New Jersey, 2002, p. 3.

2. Eric Alterman and Mark Green, The Book on Bush: How George W. Bush (Mis)leads America, Viking, New York, 2004, p.7.