Thanks George,
a very insightful
analysis.
But the danger
of Romney’s rhetoric
surely comes from the fact that his performance will
resonate with the
audience. Why will it resonate? Why can’t Obama roll his
eyes as if to say ‘Oh
please’ when the multi-millionaire Romney portrays himself
as the saviour of
the working class and perpetuates the lie that human
flourishing and well being
comes from being exploited within the capitalist free labour
market? Because Obama
has no alternative vision to offer, he is a capitalist and
imperialist, the
same as Romney and neither of them, or their parties, have
anything to offer
humanity.
Instead of
using meaningless phrases
such as ‘healing the planet’ or sharing in the, to me quite
mysterious, focus
on rising sea levels (surely the least of our climate
worries) Obama should
employ a robust critique of the economic and political
system driving the
accelerating release of greenhouse gases. Or merge his party
with the
Republicans and be done with the sham of ‘democracy’.
Chris
George Marshall @ 2:46 pm Edit This
There are curious things happening with climate change
narratives. In
this excerpt from his Republican convention acceptance speech
last night Romney
delivers a line about climate change with mocking pauses that
look, to my
British eyes, pure Glenn Beck. What does this say about the
way we message
climate change?
The line is “President Obama promised to begin to slow the
rise of the
oceans (13 second pause)
And to heal the planet (3 second pause)
My promise is to help you and your family.”
Watch it carefully because the delivery is a meticulously
choreographed
mime. Romney breaks his gaze from the audience, and does a
little eyes to
heaven, lip biting act that is all about communicating clearly
to the audience
that this is not a podium style rhetorical pause ( such as
“think not what your
country can do for you…….) but a Jack Benny stand up comedy
pause. The body
language suggests that he is like a long suffering but
resigned parent holding
in his real views about the President’s ‘stupidity’. Watch it
and see
what I mean.
http://www.youtube.com/v/GbkYBGVVpSc?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0
To me this signals several things. Firstly that the
political
discourse as a whole is being strongly influenced by the
mocking parodic style
of the shockjocks. This is nothing new- Reagan had his
‘zingers’ and every
presidential debate has one rehearsed one liner that they hope
will make the
news headlines. But the theatrical contempt is something
new. Look
for example at Bush’s delivery in the 2000 debate against Gore
“I’m beginning
to think that not only did he invent the internet, but he
invented the
calculator as well”. The intent is to mock (and it references
attack ads), but
the delivery is stiff and literal.
It is also a step change in the way that politicians talk
publicly about
climate change. So this is no longer a debate about the
science, or
the policy response (as it was under Bush)- it is now a debate
about competing
versions of reality and fantasy. The line about slowing the
rise of the oceans
is skillfully chosen as it frames climate change as both a
natural cycle and an
inevitability. The mocking pause clearly signals that attempts
to stop it are
therefore a self aggrandising folly. Here in Britain the
resonance would
be with King Cnut (Canute) who ordered the tide to stop coming
in. I suspect in
America is more likely to be with Moses. It is a quote that
appears on some
Christian Conservative sites as evidence that Obama claims to
be the Messiah.
And this all makes you wonder at the ineptitude of Obama’s
own script
writers. This was not some throw away line in a minor
interview like Gore’s
claims to have invented the internet- Romney is misquoting the
meticulously
honed language of Obama’s own acceptance speech at the
Democratic convention in
2009. Of course, we know that it has been distorted and
removed from context,
but surely it was not smart in any context to talk about
“healing the planet”-
a phrase that immediately triggers an association with the
most woowoo end of
New Age greens.
And, when there is so much that can be said about the short
term impacts and
opportunities of climate change, it was surely not bright to
reference the one
impact that is probably the most distant, protracted and
unavoidable. He might
as well have promised that his presidency would be the point
at which the North
Pole or the glaciers stopped melting. Let’s face it, this was
a gift to
his opponents.
So, if this is a harbinger of what is to come, we can expect
that climate
change will continued to be used in this election as a metaphor
for
an ideologically driven fantasy rather than as a a real issue
that should
be weighed and evaluated. Few people vote, and even fewer are
party activists,
but this framing is powerful and toxic.
George
Marshall,
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