Bad kairos…
This post is a response to a comment by long-time Rhetorica reader Sven:
As long as people use a message, it is open to rhetorical analysis, evaluation, and re-evaluation. So when we question the kairos of a message, we have to be specific about the context because the kairos could change if the context changes.
I think it’s a bad idea to bring up gulags and Nazis in any debate about American policy. Two reasons: 1) We have not done anything that compares, and 2) Political opponents will always do what they’re doing now–use the reference as a red herring.
Dick Durbin tried to qualify his statement about the treatment of prisoners:
If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.
Durbin is making a specific comparison, but it’s not metaphorical, i.e. Americans = Nazis.
In terms of kairos in the current context, an American politician (right or left) should not refer to these odious regimes. The opposition will attack the reference without regard for authorial intention. The opposition will not engage the point; the opposition will avoid the point to attack the reference. Engaging in this fallacy is usually effective and so has become an important rhetorical weapon of American politics. That being the case, any comparison to odious regimes is bad kairos.
[Hit the comment button and start flaming now!]
If I were advising Durbin, I would have told him to handle it this way:
“Ladies and gentlemen, let me read you a quote from an FBI agent…[read quote]…Now what does that sound like to you? Who does that sound like? Does that sound like something Americans do?”
This is essentially Durbin’s message, but I’ve cut out the inflammatory references. This is also much more powerful rhetorically because its enthymematic structure and use of the rhetorical question invites the audience to draw the necessary comparisons without Durbin having to speak the dreaded names. Better kairos.
I suppose there are people who hear that FBI agent’s quote and think “Yeah! That’s what the motherfuckers deserve!” I’m not one of them. I prefer to believe that America is so strong, so secure in her values and ideals, so righteous in her aims, that she can treat the most dangerous prisoners in the world humanely.
Shorter ac: False analogies make for bad kairos.
Durbin was making an argument on the Senate floor. In a controversial segment, his argument used analogy.
There are two basic fallacies when arguing by analogy: 1. Begging the Question and 2. the Weak/False Analogy.
You are arguing that using an analogy - especially a fallacious one - is bad kairos since the argument will become the focus rather than the point.
What was the bad kairos that compelled Durbin’s poor choice of such an illocutionary act?
Why focus on the predictable perlocutionary effect of using a false analogy in the illocutionary act (and critical of the auditor) rather than the intent of the speaker in choosing bad kairos using the “wrong” way (or proportion) to speak?
Sys… Take your pick. I did it the way I did it. You could do it the way you’re suggesting. It still comes out the same: bad kairos.
I think it’s bad analogy because it’s bad kairos. But, then, I happen to agree with what I think Durbin’s intention was–so perhaps that answers your question. I like my edit better. It gets the point across without making a specific comparison (which shouldn’t be made, as I said before).
The point, as I see it: Treating prisoners this way is shameful and counter to American values.
How would you make this argument?
I think it’s bad analogy because it’s bad kairos.
Why? Why not the other way around — bad kairos because it’s a bad analogy?
Whether or not you agree with Durbin’s intention doesn’t make the analogy better or worse, does it?
I have to confess to being somewhat infuriated contrasting the rhetorical situations you’ve created with the CMPA study and the “torture narrative”.
Are you a skeptic?
Have you accepted the argument that detainees at GTMO have been treated in a way that is “shameful and counter to American values”?
Based on what? Who’s ethos? The logos of the “torture narrative”? Pathos?
How many detainees have been mistreated in what way(s) based on what evidence? What are the statistics? What is the standard deviation? What are the agreed upon definitions and metrics? How does the treatment compare to other benchmarks? Does it matter?
A very thought-provoking response, AC. Much appreciated.
Sys- re: Based on what?
If I were completely consistent, I suppose I would not believe anyone about anything.
This isn’t about what I believe regarding Gitmo. This is about how to construct an argument that such behavior as described by the FBI is shameful. How would you do that?
I think Durbin should not have used ANY comparison to Nazis. I was quite clear about that.
re: “I have to confess to being somewhat infuriated contrasting the rhetorical situations you’ve created with the CMPA study and the “torture narrative”.”
I’m not sure what you mean. Is it that I seem to accept one and not the other with no apparent reason for the difference?
re: bad analogy
Let’s save this one for a bit. First, I want you to assume that you’re advising Durbin. He’s asked you to construct an argument saying that it’s shameful for Americans to hog-tie prisoners and leave them to shit and piss themselves on cold floors for 24 hours. How do construct that argument? For the sake of this exercise, we’ll assume the FBI is telling the truth.
re: How do I construct an argument …
The exercise you’ve assigned defines the perlocutionary effect on the auditor to act in order to check the Executive as a reaction to feeling shame, because an interrogator (or interrogators) hog-tied a detainee in a cold room for possibly 18-24 hours at GTMO. Which we are to assume to be true.
Do I correctly understand the assignment?
This seems to me to be an appeal to pathos (shame).
Durbin’s emphasis was to argue that such an act was a salient exemplar of abandoning international and constitutional/national principles and values — and that the auditor should be ashamed of such abandonment.
This appeal to pathos is based on a violation of our ethos as a people, or as a nation (mythos?).
Durbin also argues for sympathy with the detainee(s), although much less emphatically. That the detainee didn’t deserve such treatment or, more generally, that no detainee deserves such treatment. The decision to argue sympathy for specific detainees versus all detainees is also an important one, I think, rhetorically.
An auditor that is unsympathetic to the detainees at GTMO will be tough to shame over how the detainees are treated, and I think you recognize that with your quote at the end of the essay.
Your advice to Durbin accepts the assumption that this anonymous FBI email is a salient exemplar (assuming it’s true), the treatment violates our ethos as a nation and to avoid the analogy to Nazis, Gulags and Pol Pot — leaving it as a (rhetorical) question for the auditor to answer.
My advice would be not to assume this is a salient exemplar but rather an aberration. That the interrogator should be named and prosecuted (if that hasn’t already happened and assuming it’s true) in order to alleviate the shame of such an act. That our ethos calls for the perpetrator of such a violation to be held accountable and greater oversight put in place to make sure such aberrations remain aberrations.
Sys- You correctly understand the assignment. Interesting choice you made.
Now which rhetorical stance gets Durbin what he wants: mine or yours?
The use of SEs is always a fallacy (over-generalization) and nearly always a pathetic appeal.
I’m not sure I know what you intend by “what Durbin wants”. If Durbin want the PE of an investigation and oversight without the fallacy of an SE (which would also be bad kairos, even if made better by enthematic innuendo and rhetorical questions), then mine.
If Durbin wants to use the fallacy of an SE to increase the pathetic force of his p, then yours.
Sys– re: what Durbin wants
Durbin wants what all rhetors want: achieve certain perlocutionary effects; avoid certain perlocutionary acts.
I agree with your assessment of our approaches. So what was Durbin’s intention?
Durbin’s point is (primarily) assertive.
Doc,
I am choosing to speak about another fragment of your post:
“I prefer to believe that America is so strong, so secure in her values and ideals, so righteous in her aims, that she can treat the most dangerous prisoners in the world humanely.”
This appears to be a religious statement (or nationalistic if you prefer…same thing). It certainly is your right to retain whatever belief structure you predilections assign, yet you are the same professor who pointed out to me Thomas Jefferson’s verbal whims concerning revolution:
“A single good government becomes… a blessing to the whole earth, its welcome to the oppressed restraining within certain limits the measure of their oppressions. But should even this be counteracted by violence on the right of expatriation, the other branch of our example then presents itself for imitation: to rise on their rulers and do as we have done.” –Thomas Jefferson to George Flower, 1817. ME 15:141
This is the double-edged sword history has forged by the very fact that this once great nation was founded upon bloody revolution and not on democratic verbal exchange.
Here’s my point with all of this. My contention here stems from a misinterpretaion or a disagreement with you stance on the behavior of academics: that they should not be extremely verbally partisan or obstain from subjecting themselves to delivering torrid diatribes (strongly paraphrased). My position is different. I see American government subconcsiously adopting a paradigm shift from a government by the people, for the people to a government by the governing, for the governing. If you disagree, ask most any commoner.
Should we (academics) really pretend we are standing on solid ground (proper governmnet)?
Josh– We academics have to create the solid ground upon which we stand
and while I add the smiley, I’m quite serious.
I agree most of the time that academics “should not be extremely verbally partisan or obstain from subjecting themselves to delivering torrid diatribes.” But you should not suppose that I write from an academic stance all the time on Rhetorica. I often mix my voices and purposes. And I have what I think are very good reasons:
1. Ease the reading experience for my audience.
2. Keep it snappy.
3. And, most important, to advance my intentions, or, rather, to use rhetoric to effect my purposes, or, rather, to increase the chances of effecting certain perlocutionary acts.
I left a couple of HUGE hints in this post that my political biases are intruding. Sisyphus picked up on them immediately. He’s a careful and expert reader. I try not to inject much overt partisan intention into my posts. But I don’t view the passage you highlighted as partisan (although it is certainly political). It’s American. I’m flag waving. I’m saying: Look, we’re a great country founded on great ideals, and we’re capable of taking hits for our ideals so that we never compromise them.
In addition to offering what I think is a cogent explanation for why politicians should not use specific comparisons between any American acts and the acts of Nazis, I’m also trying to do a much better job of what I think Durbin was trying to do: Drive a wedge between the image of America as strong, free, and good and the image created by the FBI e-mail (or the photos from Abu Ghraib).
Should I mix political and/or partisan intentions with academic intentions on Rhetorica? I try to limit such mixing while realizing that it can happen even when I don’t want it to–precisely because I do not follow the strict rules of academic discourse.
Sys- Assertive, yes, but of what? I think you’ve identified the tricky balancing point
I may have overexplained to the point of being misunderstood. I knew you were not being partisan but more generally political. I was invoking the spirit of revolution (as much as that sounds like a platitude). If anything I was applauding the failure to stick to the ethical model of academic discourse. It is becoming dry and trite.
The gap between those who know and those who know not is exponentially dialating, and the gap between those who know one thing and those who know another is as well. These chasms offer those in power to much social control (the reason I referenced Jefferson). Even as I write this I feel as though I should be somehow embarrassed for speaking the word “revolution”….. the stigma it is acquired by its hackneyed in recent years is unfortunate.
edit- hackneyed “use” in recent years
Bad Durbin. Bad Democrats.
I am dismayed at Dick Durbin’s recent Senate apologia. As everyone knows, last week Durbin made some statements that compared a small set of questionable techniques for interrogation and incarceration to the sort employed by the Soviet Gulag or Nazi…
re: assertive of what?
I think this is becoming circular, which tells me either I’m missing something or you are. I’m comfortable assuming, for the time being, the former.
Durbin is asserting the SE, which by your logic, is provably false and I understand to be bad kairos. He complicates his bad kairos with a bad analogy.
You recommend improving the kairos by avoiding the bad analogy. I recommend avoiding the false assertion, which also eliminates the bad analogy.
Even eliminating the bad analogy, allowing focus on the point, Durbin loses on a false assertion of an SE.
re: “mix political and/or partisan intentions with academic intentions” - especially on a blog …
Which is closer to civic journalism: Alexis de Tocqueville Exploring Democracy in America or Jeffrey Goldfarb Civility and Subversion? Neither? A little of both?
Sys- Re: Goldfarb and de Tocqueville
Maybe a little of both. Interesting question. I haven’t thought about historicizing civic journalism. That’s probably a useful exercise. I don’t recall anyone doing it.
re: missing something
We both may be missing something