One British shop owner’s reaction after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. London Evening Standard
We may no longer have the patience to read ourselves into the implicit contracts we must make to meld the private with the public.
I was in high school in April of 1962 when an angry President Kennedy delivered remarks to the nation, expressing his displeasure with the steel industry for raising prices that he thought would prolong a recession. Who remembers presidential comments while running the chaotic maze of high school? For many of us the landscape of national life was different then. Kennedy’s criticism of the steel industry caught our attention because presidents typically did not make disparaging comments about core businesses. With unexpected fury as he noted that “simultaneous actions of United States Steel and other steel corporations, increasing steel prices by some 6 dollars a ton, constitute a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the publicinterest.” As was his habit, he talked about the national values. Hence, the rhetorical blow against “big steel,” which still supplied most of the American carmakers. “Some time ago I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country, and I asked the steel companies. In the last 24 hours we had their answer.” The famous Kennedy style of understated affability had been momentarily wiped away by his revulsion. The chill was consequential even for a high schooler. At the time it seemed as if the nation fell silent for just a moment to ponder the weight of his words.
I offer this example in representative contrast to what has unraveled in the years since then. In 1962 Americans noticed a President’s atypical displeasure. How times have changed, with the words of Donald Trump falling like so many lit matches in a dry and empty forest. The pulse quickens from the spectacle, but fewer seem shocked by a national figure who has constructed his persona around daily taunts and obscene asides. Forget a major American industry like steel, no person has been too small to be picked off in a shooting gallery of rhetorical assaults.
The use of presidential rhetoric for incitement and harassment was rare in 1962. Kennedy and his 1960 presidential campaign opponent, Richard Nixon, kept their comments to each other and their supporters civil. Neither sought to use the plentiful indecencies of rhetorical attack to impugn the character of the other. In the end, the steel price hikes were rescinded, and the nation moved on.
Now, it seems, words from former president Donald Trump seem to rush into the vacuum of what passes for civil discourse. We no longer pay much attention because the nonstop roar of hortatory language in the digital world is more distanced and transactional. In a culture of professional shouters we have apparently come to believe that we don’t have time to care. It seems not to matter that a candidate for the Presidency of the United States can suggest that a heckler should “get the hell knocked out of her,” or that he would deploy the military to handle the “enemy from within,” meaning “radical-left lunatics” like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. No wonder former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, has recently noted that the President he served under is “fascist to the core.” And we should remember that in 2016 Trump indicted himself and the nation even more in the comment that he could “shoot somebody and not lose voters.” As The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum recently wrote, he “has brought dehumanizing language into American presidential politics.” He has made language a disposable afterthought.
As a rhetorician I have a professional distaste for his sloppy indifference to the advantages of a tempered response. As for his brazen palaver, the acceptance of it by a sizable portion of the county is its own national crisis: maybe less than Kennedy’s confrontation over Cuban Missiles, but certainly more than JFK’s showdown with big steel.
Because government reaches further into our lives, its rules and stipulations provoke in some a barely dormant impulse to celebrate chaos.
It follows that his conviction for multiple felonies and an assault on at least one woman seems not to be disqualifying. A discouraging number of Americans have dismissed the details of the former President’s crimes of rebellion against the rule of law. It is no coincidence that the British chose a hasty exit from the EU at about the same time Americans first elected Trump. Both societies behaved like bored middle-schoolers searching for a sense of identity in a confusing world.
The influential conservative writer David Brooks has noted that the United States is “a democracy in decline,” in part because more Americans with lives shrunken to the size of their personal devices are ill suited to deal with pages and paragraphs that are needed to make sense of a complex society. Primary sources have been overwhelmed by influencers and interpreters. With news readership and viewership at record lows, too many distracted owners no longer feel compelled to confront the stressed political environment. It is easy to get comfortable with the realization that no one is really paying much attention.
There are also other forces at work. Speaking in broad strokes, because government reaches further into our lives, its rules and stipulations provoke in some a barely dormant impulse to feed a backlash that celebrates chaos. Many no longer have the patience to read themselves into the implicit contracts with civil institutions such as schools and libraries that meld the private with the public. The ubiquitous use of film violence targeting men offers a clue. It seems to function as an opportunity for vicarious release from the work of living in an interdependent and culturally diverse society. To self-identify as dispossessed is reason enough not to care.
Addressing Potential Voters is Increasingly Problematic.
With communication technologies, we often substitute the convenient for the best. We can break off a long friendship with a text. But so impersonal a message is arguably a long way from meeting to talk through a suddenly troubled relationship. Ditto to a friend in behalf of a particular political candidate. We should expect what is innately human: presenting ourselves and our words in real time and space. The timeless and innate defaults of discourse should not be lightly tossed aside. Among other things, disembodied messages enable all kinds of unintended noise. Just try reading someone’s body language in a Zoom meeting. It is like night driving with dark glasses.
To be sure, there are obvious advantages to various electronic extensions. Mass media allow millions to receive a single message. We expect that the great and significant will come to us through many channels, sometimes low levels of retention. Skepticism is also justified given the number of “dark posts” that hide the actual sources of deceitful messages. These may ostensibly support a candidate, but deliberately offend readers in the process. If a campaign has enough money, there are also many ways to target voters using radio or cable advertising strategically.
And let’s make it even more complicated. Predicting elections through polling actually measures attitudes. We ask people what they think. But voting itself is a private behavior. As we all know, what people say and what they do can be two different things: a factor that might mean the possibility of a Trump polling undercount. After all, he is a convicted felon and, according to a federal judge, the rapist of E. Jean Carroll. Voters may prefer to hedge what they say to a pollster.
And so to a timely and practical question. How are voters for the upcoming election to be reached by candidates or committed activists?
As interesting or unsettling as it is, let’s aside the presidential race a moment. There are roughly 510,000 electoral offices in the United States. Many of those seeking support in a local election have no better option than to canvass their friends and neighbors door to door. Paid media is often too expensive. So is phone or direct mail enough to have a positive effect on a person’s voting behavior? As the 2000 study below suggests, neither form is likely to increase voter turnout. At that time only in-person contact (via door to door canvasing or a live meeting with a candidate) are likely to move the needle. Canvassing increased the baseline of voter turnout by almost 10 percent.
Of course campaign tools are now more varied. We have many more ways to target voters, using public voter data and social media algorithms to reach potential supporters and voters. But getting real action may mean getting past the advertising clutter and stock appeals on social media to showing up as a citizen’s front door. One interesting study indicates that attitudes about transphobia could be moderated in about ten percent of the population if a personal appeal was made—again—at a homeowner’s front porch.
However promising these results, there is now reason to believe that our increasingly digital world as well as the long interregnum of Covid pose challenges to engaging others on their doorstep. A neighborly knock on the door seems to be greeted with more caution. One common alternative is to formally invite neighbors over to meet a candidate. In this format a city council candidate visits perhaps four homes over several days where a supporter has promised to fill their living room with potential supporters. The larger the constituency, the more the gathered group will hear from a volunteer, a candidate’s partner or staff member.
It is also good to remember that elections on won on the margins. Not everyone needs to be persuaded. In most cases a change of about 6 percent of those voting is enough to make the formerly defeated candidate the top vote getter.
interest.” As was his habit, he talked about the national values. Hence, the rhetorical blow against “big steel,” which still supplied most of the American carmakers. “Some time ago I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country, and I asked the steel companies. In the last 24 hours we had their answer.” The famous Kennedy style of understated affability had been momentarily wiped away by his revulsion. The chill was consequential even for a high schooler. At the time it seemed as if the nation fell silent for just a moment to ponder the weight of his words.
