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USA Edition | Today Is Monday, March 22, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Monday, March 22, 2010 |
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| Declarative — A Definition | « Scan Content In The Order It Was Published » | Pushing Money Around Is Not Banking | |
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The America One Sees Depends On From Where One Looks
Folks, the most insidious part of this whole health care scheme is that all of these vast medical expenditures will become nothing more than government budget items. We individuals will no longer exist. The relationship between a government and citizen will change forever.
Rush Limbaugh
The 1992 presidential campaign produced a coarsening within American society that has damaged the nation’s ability to deal with issues fundamental to our freedoms and national self interest. The bounds of civil discourse, both public and private, have changed in ways destructive to the democratic process. In the last twenty years fidelity-to-fact in public and private discourse has been systemically pushed aside in favor of dismissive declaration.
The outcome has been intentional polarization of the political process, widespread abdication of institutional responsibility, both public and private, and the elevation of self-righteous declaration to the equivalent of truth. Failing standards and malfeasance in big media have coarsened how we relate to one another by proffering what’s loud and declarative as if the equal of what’s reasoned, informed, or thoughtful.
Declaring is not the equivalent of thinking, understanding or wisdom. It is evidence of aggression and intellectual malfeasance.
Being dismissive is evidence of ego — not clear thinking.
Dismissiveness is used to demean ideas or information from others as well as to conceal weakness, unwanted information, or to engage in intellectual malfeasance. Being dismissive is not a tool of advancement, but a tool of closure meant to keep the unwitting, uninformed and ideological zealots inline. It is the foundation for polarization in politics whose purpose is to gain or hold power by any means including intentional mis-information.
Although dismissiveness is not historically significant in American politics, in the last generation it has been embraced by and widely practiced by all parties and most office holders.
Declaration is the substitution of an idea, policy, or assertion as if fact. It is used to obfuscate or avoid reality. Knowing what matters most and being able to think for oneself is often pushed aside in favor of ideological declaration and magic words intended to inflame passions or subvert the political system. What changed during the 1992 presidential campaign was not not the use of magic words — for code words have been applied to political campaigns for as long as anyone can remember. What changed was dismissiveness as a political gambit.
George H. W. Bush’s 2nd presidential campaign pitted Ronald Reagan’s anointed successor against a young and inexperienced governor of a small southern state. It should have been a clear battle between the two major divisions within America’s single party system. It didn’t turn out that way for both major candidates were mocked, attacked and marginalized by someone who attacked both candidates and their polarized supporters with dismissive comments and declarative statements offered as if evidence of clear thinking.
The public, weary of sleazy politicians and failed promises took immediate notice. The appearance of clear thinking, simple analysis, and declarative rhetoric drove home messages largely framed in magic words.
Ross Perot's Dismissive Attitudes and Declarative Style Caught America's Attention
The candidate was H. Ross Perot – a successful Texas entrepreneur-businessman who propelled Electronic Data Systems into a dominant position in corporate and government data processing. A small man, driven by his immense business success, Ross Perot was quick of wit and fond of stating complex issues in simple, plain language.
Perot did not invent the notion of declarative statements uttered in undisguised contempt as being the equal of critical thinking, but his style fit the needs of cable news [ CNN ] and made of him a political contender for president of the United States.
Driven by his own ego, and the comfort of wealth, Ross Perot drove the 1992 political dialog so successfully that the was widely credited for denying George Bush [ 41 ] a second term. During the 1992 campaign Ross Perot damaged both major candidates by saying things America wanted to hear and believe in absolute terms and devastating clarity. Whether or not Perot’s sometimes outrageous statements made any sense didn’t matter for what he said had the ring of truth at a time Americans were distrusting of their government and their politicians.
What Perot brought to politics was neither experience, nor clear thinking, but a fire-brand’s energy, a dictator’s simplistic logic, and the ability to reduce complex problems to seemingly easy, and obvious, solutions. Ross Perot’s magic words and simple-minded palliatives were delivered dismissively — stunning the political establishment, but welcomed by the American people.
Before Perot, Democrats might well have believed that declarative obfuscation began with the palliative utterances of Ronald Reagan and his ethereal shining city on some distant hill. Followers of Bush (41) more likely believed it had been Franklin Delano Roosevelt who declared New Deal liberalism as if the only thoughtful solution for any and every problem.
Declarative Style Projects Texas Conservatism
Political poppycock, that is statements offered as if relevant, credible or constructive, is as old as politics. No candidate, no party and no single event marked the origins of declaratory misinformation. Every American president used declaratory language to elevate ideas, or aspirations to the equivalent of fact. So have every other politician, salesman, clergy and school teacher.
Today the dismissive declaration is used to scam the recipient into believing that which is not true, inexplicable, or logically flawed. It is used to conceal reality in favor of an illusion that dis-empowers those least able to think for themselves. At its worst, the dismissive declarative is insulting, dis-empowering and polarizing. It is a tool whose purpose is to obfuscate, distort and discredit.
What happened in 1992 was not the invention of declaration in lieu of thinking, but the blending of two widely used means of omnipotent power dismissive and declaration as if fact. Prior to that campaign, politicians steered away from open and overt dismissiveness. Then, on February 20, 1992, H. Ross Perot, the former owner of Electronic Data Systems, appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live to announce his intention to run as an independent in the 1992 presidential campaign.
Perot’s dismissive attitude and declaratory statements focused on simple, but impossible achievements that included balancing the federal budget,ending gun control, banning the outsourcing of American jobs, aggressive protectionism on trade, enhancing the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency. He even called for electronic town halls as a means to include all Americans in the electoral process. By the time the King show ended that night, Ross Perot has become a legitimate contender for the presidency — no matter his complete lack of political experience or his sometimes dictatorial views.
How Much Longer Must One Listen To Perot?
In a matter of weeks Ross Perot’s polling numbers were close to those of the major party candidates. The major party candidates were caught off guard by the brash Texan who spoke clearly to issues by offering one liner comments and dismissive indictments of any and all who thought otherwise. What Ross Perot brought to the 1992 presidential campaign was his ability to be contemptuous and dismissive about issues that voters wanted to believe were flawed.
Then, Time Magazine put Ross Perot on the cover of its May 25th issue — which made George H. W. Bush look indecisive and weak while serving to obscure Bill Clinton’s summer of scandals.
That summer American political discourse began to shift away from what matters most to what’s shouted the loudest. Today a nation once proud of its centrist governance capabilities is increasingly dysfunctional, terrifyingly ignorant about what matters most, and nearing the point where a free people willingly give up their freedoms for illusions painted dismissively by the elite in simple declarations beyond anyone’s understadning.
You might say it proved to be a derivative way of thinking.
