Category Archives: Rhetorical Mastery

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Is Retribution an Actual Organizing Principle?

He says he is doing this for others. But his vindictive acts seem to spring from a persecution complex that turns the idea of a unifying president on its head.

Donald Trump has noted many times that his administration is organized to seek retribution for words or actions used against him and others who share his views. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he told supporters in March 2023. He warned the nation that this would be his guiding “principle” for governing, and he has kept that promise. In a stunning break with the norms of past presidents, Trump makes it a point almost every day to use his office for payback to group and individuals he sees as oppositional. Hence he has taken away security protection for former officials who have criticized him, including Anthony Fauci and John  Bolton. And ostensibly “woke” safety net and federal aid programs that have offended him have been unfunded. Stripping people of their employment or protection is cruel and easy; doing the hard work of governing is mostly beyond him. Given this logic, only the completely synced vice president could imagine that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan were  “placeholders” rather than true “men of action.”

Retribution is a behavioral outlier that turns the long settled idea of a unifying president on its head. Instead of looking for transcendent themes, Trump cites injustices—often against him personally—most of his time is spent on proclamations of  denial and repudiation. This attitude has its own lexicon;  reckoning, redress, reprisal, retaliation, revenge, and vengeance are among the many terms at the bottom of a dark pit of dystopian motives. Normally these play out in criminal narratives, such as The Sopranos or the Godfather films. Most Americans would not want to be ruled by these impulses. But Trump has a sociopathic streak. Hiding his ire behind a reality show smile, he seems to think that the enactment of flamboyant public reprisals gives him stature.

In truth, there’s no normalizing these pitiful attacks. Consider the vast range of civil society institutions denigrated or defunded:

  • Universities
  • Federal and state courts
  • Political opponents
  • Former NATO allies
  • News organizations
  • Businesses
  • Trading partners
  • Election volunteers
  • Former presidents
  • Law firms
  • State leaders
  • Equal rights groups
  • Museums and libraries
  • the United Nations
  • Immigrants
  • Aid agencies
  • Funded medical and academic  research

NPR has tallied over 100 targets picked because of some slight against the President, or one of his questionable assertions. The New York Times has a more detailed catalogue. Most, he believes, are guilty of  what he sees as personal slights against him, some ginned up to be “treasonous” crimes.

Its an old trope of our species to feed off the familiar cycle of hate,  victimage, and punishment. Think of Puritan trials, male oppositional rituals in violent “sports,” or Shakespeare’s historical plays that display brooding quests for revenge. We have mostly tamed these impulses, giving the formal function of retribution to the criminal courts. Who else is interested in building a national movement around so aggressive and brutal an idea? As a collection of scholars writing in the journal Law and Human Behavior note, “Retributive justice essentially refers to the repair of justice through unilateral imposition of punishment,”   but courts can also take the different route of “restorative justice, meaning “the repair of justice through. . . a shared. . . bilateral process.”  Requiring a defendant to make good on an earlier promise to a plaintiff would fit the restorative model, which can be adapted to policy-making.  But seldom does Trump take this more coactive stance.

Who builds a national movement around so brutal an idea?

Retribution is easily paired with the idea of hate, the engine that powers the desire to give a wounding response. In turn, this adds a level of worry within targets fearful of the negative consequences that may result. Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski recently reported her own fear of the consequences for doing her legislative duties.  That is a terrible omen, and surely the reason we have a servile GOP.

It is apparent that Donald Trump has obviously banked a lot of the personal and professional slights that have eaten away at his judgment. The result is that we’ve ended up with endless executive actions against individuals and groups that have verge into the pathological.

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When Results Fall Short of Expectations

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A number of years of writing and teaching has forced me to be a student of the unexpected ricochet. That’s pretty much the whole game if you are playing racquetball, and it has a lot of relevance to communication.

second thoughtsThe actual court for the game is simply a 20 by 40-foot white box with walls that function as a playing surfaces for several players hitting a hard rubber ball. It’s typically smashed so hard against the playing wall that it comes back at speeds and angles are hard to predict. Those missed shots off the walls, ceiling or floor are how you score points against your opponent. Those who have escaped the sting of that small missile can be thankful. It hurts. A bruised French player must have coined the word “ricochet.” But it also evokes the unanticipated associations, meanings, slights, and bogus significations possible every time we open our mouths. More than most kinds of human endeavor, persuasion is fraught with effects that are unforeseen. No wonder it is so difficult.

From a number of meta-studies we know that the odds of getting someone to alter their attitudes even after a flurry of good reasons have been presented is—on the best days—no better than maybe one in ten. After explaining this theory of “minimal effects” in a class, a student glumly asked, “What’s the point? Why bother? The challenge hardly seems worth the effort.”

The short answer is that we have no choice. We are hard-wired to connect. And, by the way, who says that convincing another person to give up an attitude or a cherished behavior should be easy? We’ve worked hard to put our lives together in some sort of coherent way; we are not going to rearrange them on a whim.

It’s best to consider what can go wrong. In persuasion theory, unexpected effects are called “boomerangs.” The idea is important to remember because even well-planned campaigns to change others’ behaviors can easily veer off course. I teach this logic, and encourage my students to wear their newly acquired skepticism as a badge of honor. Having a healthy level of doubt about predicted effects is a life skill. Recall Elon Musk brandishing his chain saw in the Oval Office, or hoisting his arm in some sort of Fascist salute, or demonstrating  the toughness of his truck’s windows as one breaks.  All were surely not what the unpopular Musk intended.

Consider some additional cases, mostly true:

  • You show up to give an invited presentation to a group and (a) there is no screen for the PowerPoints you counted on, (b) there is nowhere to plug in your video projector, (c) there is no podium for your notes and (d) and a crew of ten men and machines are busy re-paving the parking lot next door.  Under these circumstances, how effective do you think will can be?
  • Your advertising agency has prepared a gay-friendly ad campaign that tested well and is now running in three national media outlets. Everyone on the creative team basks in their certain rewards of their progressive messages. But a respected leader in the LGBT community condemns the ads for “promoting old stereotypes.”  Condemnation of the ads is getting more attention than the ads themselves.
  • At a business lunch with a potential client you innocently praise the good service you once got from a large national retailer, only to be chided for supporting a chain whose owners are “political reactionaries.”
  • You meet a new set of Michigan in-laws for the first time, not realizing that for this family of General Motors employees, your new Ford visible to all in their front driveway might just as well be a load of manure.
  • You are Bridget Jones at a literary party in the midst of introducing the work of a hack you brazenly oversell as the author of “the greatest book of our time.”  This happens just as you catch  looks of dismay from the faces of Jeffrey Archer and Salman Rushdie, just a few feet away.

When it comes to communication, it is reasonable to worry about things going wrong. You will probably be pleasantly surprised, but it pays to be a little bit of a pessimist.