Patience, and Rhetoric

I had vowed (in a manner of speaking) to be patient with the Alt-Right.  It is so easy to be annoyed with their lack of substance, their disregard for the health of the very old, the very young, and the very poor; their tolerance for the deceit of Trump and his running dogs, and their opposition to Biden's programme.  That last is a given; the GOP wants the Democrats out of office, and Mitch McConnell has long ago shown how utter disregard for the needs of the electorate is rarely punished by the voters.

Giving in to the annoyance that we (or I, anyway) feel is easier on me, because after a while, thinking of the conservatives as a herd of imbecile lemmings streaming over some cliff overlooking the sea is a comforting image.  But anyone who has been paying attention to reporting by the media on individuals, formerly Alt-Righters, coming in from the cold, reveals that a host of them have found it difficult to turn a blind eye to the untruthful rhetoric emanating from Trump Central.  Therefore it is imperative that these refugees from the GOP are met with reason, rather than knee-jerk viciousness.

I'm using "rhetoric" in a slightly illegal sense.  The word really means the tone of a speech, the choice of words of a speaker (or a writer) that is deliberately intended to create a certain effect in the audience.  The common usage of the word implies that rhetorical language is, to various degrees, deceitful.  It need not be, but when the term rhetoric is used increasingly in recent times, because of the rhetorical excesses of the speech on the right, the difference between rhetoric and lies becomes blurred.

But the word rhetoric is still useful, because it conveys that the people who use it today knowingly use it to create a certain impression, while knowing that it stretches the truth, or, increasingly today, consists of out-and-out lies.

For instance, when the Alt-Right leaders suggest that the COVID vaccines are unsafe, it is rhetoric, because the CDC was slow to actually certify them, and vaccines are guilty of being unsafe until proven innocent.  When they say that the vaccines are an aspect of government control, even mind control, they are engaging in slander, that is, lying.

However, some of these "second-rank" GOP leaders are so feeble-minded that they believe their own rhetoric, their own lies, that is, and lose sight of the actual facts that they have to deal with.  For instance, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is a presidential hopeful, initially cooperated with Trump to minimize the danger of COVID.  Then he, with Trump, chose to cast doubt about the efficacy of the vaccine, just so that Biden would be ineffectual in controlling the spread of infection.  But it so happened that the infection was controlled partially, in such a way that the efficacy of the vaccines, at least temporarily, was established, and the shortfall of the vaccines from total effectivity could be easily seen to be caused by dangerous behavior by people carrying infections.  By easy implication, Ron DeSantis and his cronies could be considered to actually cause the spread of COVID in conservative states.  And now, it is mostly conservative states in which the infection is rampant.  And the very constituents of Ron DeS. and his conservative fellow-governors, are dying, which reveals the utter contempt these people have, the sorry lack of compassion they have, for the weaker ones within their flock--thinking for a moment of these governors as shepherds.  This is not just callous, it is stupid.  Well, they are all ambitious, all eager to join the line of conservatives seeking the White House.  The members of their states may overlook their callousness, and vote for them for president.  But the country as a whole is more likely to remember their ignorance, their callousness, and their stupidity.  In their eagerness to cast shade on Biden, they have thrown their old and feeble, their low-paid hospital workers, the teachers in their schools, under the bus.  It was so preventable.

So we know that the conservative candidates for the presidency in 2024 are going to be callous, and stupid, and ignorant.  Certainly, they are going to be weak in their science background.  They are going to have to be fast talkers.  And they're not going to persuade too many people.  Their chance may come in 2028, after the Democrats have dragged themselves kicking and screaming into moving the country towards a more equitable society, and a less violent climate.  If they don't, conservative rhetoric hardly matters.

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