The War Reaches a Climax

Quote: “A defection is better than a surrender, a surrender better than a capture, and a capture better than a kill.”  New U.S. Army field manual on counter-insurgency wars.

Figure of Speech:  anadiplosis (an-a-di-PLO-sis), the climax.

The Army’s new manual on guerilla warfare is a fount of political and military wisdom.  The quote above sums up both politics and war in a neat little anadiplosis (Greek for “climax”), which uses the last part of a clause to begin the next clause.

The anadiplosis’s structure works like a pyramid, with each part overlapping the next.  It lends a rhythm that an audience gets into — even when it disagrees with your point, because the listener mentally fills in each next piece.  This works so well that it makes an efficient means of manipulation; a climax can lead unwary audience step by step straight into the Slippery Slope fallacy.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas tried just that in a law school speech:  “If you lie, you will cheat ; if you cheat , you will steal; if you steal , you will kill.”

As with any figure, use it wisely and try not to hurt anyone.

Snappy Answer:  “And an ally is better than a defection.”

Fiddling While Earth Burns

Quote:  “I think we have a problem on global warming.  I think there is a debate about whether it’s caused by mankind or whether it’s caused naturally, but it’s a worthy debate.”  President Bush

Figure of Speech:   fallacy of controversy.

“Teach the controversy.”  The creationists use this ruse to batter evolution without having to prove their own case; now Bush uses it to sow doubt about the human causes of global warming.  In each instance, scientific opinion is nearly unanimous, and the “controversies” are almost entirely political.

The fallacy of controversy is one of the most insidious weapons of illogic, because it cynically exploits our sense of fair play.  There are two sides to every question, but only if you have a question to start with.  Bush weighs a political argument against a scientific one as if they compose one debate.   But politics is an apple, and science is an orange.

“It’s a debate, actually, that I’m in the process of solving,” Bush assures us, “by advancing new technologies, burning coal cleanly in electric plants, or promoting hydrogen-powered automobiles, or advancing ethanol as an alternative to gasoline.”

Well, that’s a relief!  Of course, none of the technologies he names actually reduces carbon emissions, the chief cause of global warming.  But they work rhetorical wonders.

Snappy Answer:  “Worthy of what?”

Of Course, Lincoln Was a Republican

Quote:  “Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality.”  Senator Barack Obama.

Figure of Speech:  epiphonema (e-pih-pho-NEE-ma), the memorable summary.

Barack Obama recently gave the best speech we have seen in years, warming Figaro’s heart by following Cicero’s rules for oratorical arrangement.  More than that, though, Obama offers a way out of our nation’s dilemma over religion and politics.

Religion belongs in politics because we’re a religious nation, he says.  But faith sublimely demands the impossible, while politics is the art of the possible.  He sums up this point in an epiphonema (“proclaim”), an expression that condenses a thought into memorable words.

Obama’s epiphonema provides an excellent definition of phronesis, or practical wisdom — a trait that Aristotle called essential to rhetorical leadership.  A fundamentalist Christian may be happy to know that you try to do as Christ would do; but he still wouldn’t let you remove his appendix without a medical license. That’s phronesis.

Obama gave America a healthy dose of rhetorical physic with that speech.  Read it by clicking on his name, above.

Snappy Answer:  “You remind us of another guy who ran for Senate in Illinois, four score years ago and more.”

They Are Due to Touch Us Again

Quote:   “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”   Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Speech.

Figure of speech:  period, the stately sentence.

There is a reason why we don’t hear speeches like Lincoln’s anymore, and that reason is the forgotten period (from the Greek perihodos, “way around”).  In rhetoric, the period is a sentence that unfolds like a flower, with one clause leading to the next, each clause enriching the one that came before.  (The word didn’t turn into punctuation until the Middle Ages.)

Lincoln’s use of all those commas seems archaic to our eyes.  But read the sentence aloud, and your ears will hear — not a speech as we know it, but music:  a lyrical poem that ends with a celestial choir.

Our leaders have much to learn from Lincoln’s rhetoric.  It teaches us that a president’s legacy lies not in the power he wields, but in his will to conduct, literally and figuratively conduct, our union.

A happy Fourth to you.

Snappy Answer:  None whatsoever.

For the White House, This Is Torture

Quote:  “Irregular interrogation polices are illegal in the wake of this opinion — illegal, illegal, illegal.” Derek P. Jinks, University of Texas law professor, in the LA Times.

Figure of Speech:  ploce (PLO-see), the emphatic repeater.

The Supreme Court ruled that President Bush’s jury-rigged Guantanamo military tribunals fall out of Constitutional bounds.  But what really has the White House’s figurative panty in a twist is a passage in the majority opinion that takes all the fun out of Gitmo.  The Court says that the U.S. is bound by the Geneva Convention, which forbids degrading or inhumane treatment of prisoners.  Not only does the government have to try these people in real courts, it’s not allowed to torture them.

Professor Jinks dances on the policy’s grave with a ploce (“interweaving”), a general figure that repeats a word for emphasis.  When used as a summary at the end of a sentence, the ploce gives a term added rhetorical power.  Be careful, though.  In the hands of a victor, the repetition can sound overly triumphant.

It’s enough to make a Bush staffer move to North Korea, where they show proper respect for authority.

Snappy Answer:  “Good thing those secret CIA prisons don’t count.”

And Lead Us Not Unto Krypton

Quote:  “It’s hard not to think that Superman isn’t the only one here with a savior complex.”  Manola Dargis in a New York Times film review.

Figure of Speech:  apophasis (a-PAH-pha-sis), the not-to-mention figure.

The new Superman movie is getting mixed reviews, which is easy to understand given the character’s strong-man-in-tights schizophrenia.  But Dargis points out that the movie’s makers pad Superman’s job description.  Besides keeping the world safe from Kevin Spacey, the S-Man has the additional, more tiresome chore of saving humankind from its own sins.  In case anyone misses the Super-Passion theme, one scene has our hero suspended in mid-air with arms outstretched like the J-Man Himself.

The Times review sums up the matter in an apophasis (“denial”), a figure of thought that emphasizes an argument by seeming to pass over it.  (See more examples here and here.)

Figaro could say that the Times shows some nerve accusing another medium of pretentiousness. But he won’t.

Snappy Answer:  “So Lois Lane is Mary Magdalene, but who does Judas? Jimmy Olsen?”