Reality-making rhetoric

Native Americans believe in the creative power of language. Words create the world. The world comes into being by being spoken. In the beginning was the word. The Judeo-Christian culture is also based on this principle. Sociologists and philosophers like Pierre Bourdieu or Michel Foucault have demonstrated how language can impose definitions of the world.

This dimension of language is fundamental to politics, whatever side you are on. Both Democrats and Republicans keep repeating the US is the greatest country on earth. It does not matter that this expression is absolutely meaningless. The greatest country in what respect? For landscape beauty? One of the greatest for sure. Individual freedoms? Undoubtedly among the greatest, yes, although the recent years have done nothing to maintain the US to the top of the chart. Health care? One of the worst actually. And getting worse and worse. Knowledge of the world outside its borders? Very bad, very bad indeed. Environmental issues? One of the worst too, unquestionably. For diplomacy? Not too great, no. The US is actually one of the most bellicose nations in the world.
So, what does it mean?

Yesterday, at a forum at Columbia University, John McCain was asked the question. Does it mean the Americans are better than the rest of the world? John answered that “the US is the only country I know that believes that all men are equal.” Well, he was right to qualify that statement with “I know.” It is the only country he knows believes all men are equal. He does not know much about other countries, then. So I guess he is less qualified than his running mate as far as foreign policy is concerned. Because I know a lot of countries that believe all men are equal. Let me think... er... well, France would be one of them. And many others, of course.
I guess he does not even know the US very much either, for that matter. When I read the readers’ letters in a local newspaper like The Oklahoman, for example, I understand that many Americans do not believe that all men are equal.
When John uttered this stupid statement he referred, once again, to the Founding Fathers. John, I know Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men were equal, but John... how shall I put?... er... Jefferson, and most of the other people you call Founding Fathers, had slaves.
You might not have heard of slavery, but that was not the best episode in the history of the greatest country on earth.
Oh, and by the way, until the middle of the 20th century, people were in segregated schools and it took the Supreme Court to change that because apparently the federal government had a hard time believing that all men were equal.
Yes, I know, they were separate but equal. But that was a huge bunch of hypocritical crap, right?

So, anyway, all this does not matter anyway. What is important is how many times they repeat the same lies. After a while, the lies become reality.
Even though all politicians are guilty of this, the Republicans in this campaign seem to elevate this practice to art.

The media are persecuting Sarah and her family.

The mayor of a small Alaska town has huge responsibilities.

Sarah has always opposed pork barrel politics.

Barack is sexist.

The US is winning the war in Iraq.

John and Sarah are mavericks and reformers.

Barack wants to teach kindergarten children about sex education.

Abortion is murder.

Andrew Rice – running in Oklahoma for the US Senate – opposes traditional marriage.

All these simplistic statements are lies. But they are simplistic, easy to understand, they have a great impact, and they are what most Americans will remember from this campaign because they simply don’t have time – or the willpower – to get informed at a deeper level.

So, if they repeat those statements enough, every day, all day long, on all channels, every time they are interviewed whatever the questions they are being asked, those statement will become reality. Not truth, but reality. That is to say they will become the context that will determine how the voters are going to act. People’s actions will not be determined by true conditions and circumstances but by the conditions and circumstances that will be real to them. In their limited world, Andrew Rice does not oppose an amendment – called Traditional Marriage Amendment – to the Oklahoma Constitution that would state that a marriage is a union between two human beings of different gender; in most people’s limited but real world, Andrew Rice opposes traditional marriage.

This is reality-making rhetoric and this is what this campaign is about.
And it works.
It has worked before.

Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Al Qaeda is in Iraq.
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Al Qaeda is in Iraq.

Let’s go to war then.