There are two ways that I understand the rhetorical strategies of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
As a quick aside: When I say strategy here I do not mean to indicate that I think Trump is employing particular rhetorical strategies on purpose, i.e. intentionally because he is in control. This isn’t the post to go into it right now. Just know that I think he reacts with a particular and limited set of approaches.<\/p>\n
So let’s amend the first sentence to: There are two ways (among several) that I understand the reactions and approaches of President Donald Trump to the circumstances and contexts of his being a powerful political actor.<\/p>\n
The first: He tends to react based on positive feedback. Think “drain the swamp” getting applause. So he went in that direction.<\/p>\n
But this post is about a television show called America in which President Trump is the host. The most recent example is The Patriot Games (CNN article<\/a>).<\/p>\n In the discipline of rhetoric we have a technical term that refers to our understanding of a particular persuasive message without having done a proper textual analysis followed by peer review. That term is: totally fucking obvious.<\/p>\n The Patriot Games? The Hunger Games? From 2016 onward, we have seen how the tropes of television and film have played a significant role in how Trump approaches inserting (pardon my use of another technical term here) crazy shit into the culture.<\/p>\n For more on exactly how\/why this crazy shit works (i.e. persuading people and keeping them hooked), I suggest becoming familiar with the work of these two academic authors: Roderick Hart <\/a>and Neil Postman<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hint: Screens play a big role here. This was the source of some of my grumpiness back in the early days of this blog when I said things such as: News should be read, not watched.<\/p>\n (The astute reader will ask: How do you square that last statement with the fact that you are a documentary filmmaker. I have an answer! Stay tuned.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are two ways that I understand the rhetorical strategies of President Donald Trump. As a quick aside: When I say strategy here I do not mean to indicate that I think Trump is employing particular rhetorical strategies on purpose, … Continue reading