One of the distinctions I make in my research on interpersonal communication is distinguishing between what we call "representatives," and "expressives." A representative is the kind of speech act that has traditionally been the most salient concern of linguistic philosophers,* that is an assertion which can be assigned a truth value based on a method of verification available to a set of beings with requisite sensory apparatus, logical processing capability, and opportunity for observation -- normally meaning cognitively and sensorily normal humans. Formally, positivists say that the meaning of a statement is equivalent to the means by which it can be verified.

I don't mean to keep things all riled up around here and maybe I don't know squat, but I was just wondering whether Kos could have posted that teeth comment as a ploy to spur this community to get serious about working through all these pervasive, ongoing political discourse issues that seem to plague the blogosphere on both the right and the left. In my view, these issues threaten to undermine all of our hopes for sane and responsible government leadership and a better future.

Kos, you sly dog, you.

Please leap across the fold ...

(originally posted at my blog Nothing New Under The Sun)

There has been alas too much personal stress (code for my family and coworkers have driven me round the bend again) as well as the dauntingness of all the awfulness of the news, how to comment on any of it? the sorrowful are mute - but one small aspect of all the headdesking quality (or huddled-under-the-desk quality) of it all has galled my history-buff brain into banging on the desk, because words matter, ideas matter and sloppy language --> sloppy thinking --> grossly-stupid action (or inaction), and this way, way, too common bad habit is something this first-hand-sources junkie knows a little about.

I'm speaking of all the whinging Deploring of the Vitriol-Slinging in the Political Discourse in Online Communities Today, Undoubtedly Brought About By the Slacking Moral Standards Caused By The Anonymity Of The Internet - using perhaps not all those exact words in every instance, but inevitably* using the word "vitriol", along with these memes--

People, do you know what vitriol-slinging really IS? Do you know what vitriol is, either? It has NOTHING to do with harsh language, at all.

Will the inability of our leaders to speak the truth be our eventual undoing?

"Bittergate" is deeply symptomatic of what has become wrong with our political discourse.

So I found the following comment from a former co-worker on a link I had posted to Facebook regarding Hillary's slim chances of winning the nomination. Believe it or not, this is coming from a very liberal woman living in NYC:

if he gets the nomination i am either voting for mccain or not voting at all. the guy has nothing to say, and has done nothing. the guy went to a racist church, and frankly race relations will get even worse in this country if hes elected. everything will be black and white. any conservative democrat and most southern white ones will run the other way. if he wins the nomination the only thing its proving is that the dems are once again simply not interested in winning elections. count me as one who refuse to vote for this poor excuse for a candidate. unfortunately, ferraro was 100% correct, and anyone who isnt too PC and/or a whiny cry baby will admit that.

My response below the fold. I'm posting this to a diary in the hopes that others will help me strengthen my response to shit like this, and so that others might have a handy template of their own. My number one overriding goal when discussing politics is to ensure that my response keeps the discourse flowing, any criticisms of my efforts would be greatly appreciated.

[Originally I was going to post this to one of the threads about Bill Clinton, but I felt the focus would be hi-jackery, so I’m doing this as a diary of my own.]

I am so angry right now because of what I’ve read and heard about Bill Clinton’s appearance before some veterans in North Carolina that I probably shouldn’t be posting here, and it’s likely that I’ll be all over the place (sorry).  I’d like to point out something that I have not seen discussed here or elsewhere.  What is going on right now is impacting folks in the left of our party.  Why do folks consider voting for third parties?  I have made claims, comments and analyses in the past that are way more radical than what Rev. Wright has said.  I receive this message loud and clear HRC camp—you are embarrassed to have people like me in your political family.  Unlike Obama, you can’t disagree with me and remain friends.  Just like the Republicans want to eliminate you, it seems that for some dems, folks like me are supposed to quietly vote for HRC or other mod/conserve dems, STFU, and then pretend we don’t notice that they’re implying we’re not patriotic.

I am a Midwesterner, one not prone to getting irrational about things. However, the recent tactics of the Clinton campaign are bewildering, and I am feeling anger where once there was calm and cautious optimism.

With all due respect, I would ask those who can get to Hillary Clinton and speak honestly with her to do so quickly. More below the fold.

Not sure if this falls into the "interesting" file or the "useful" file. A Scientific American article looks briefly into a couple of common logical fallacies that are used in political discourse and repeated by the media. One has an old name - the straw man argument, and the other has a new name - the weak man argument.
http://www.sciam.com/...

Recently Republicans have been playing "pillory Hillary" because of a remark she made to the Boston Globe editorial board.  They took one snippet out of context.  The those words were

The quote that was lifted from the interview and magnified by Clinton's opponents is this: "I have a million ideas. The country can't afford them all."

and since then we have seen emails and on their website the Clinton Spend-o-meter.  In the debate in Orlando Giuliani repeated the Clinton line an added

"No kidding Hillary, America can't afford you!"

Except as the Globe notes in its editorial entitled What Hillary said

All in good fun, perhaps, until you learn that Clinton was saying she opposes big government spending, not the other way around.

.

how often do we note to our cost the uselessness and vapidity of what passes for our political debate?  one brick in the pap wall of our discourse is the demand for apology.

whenever the meat thrown to the base is too raw for general public consumption, the routine response tendered to the media is the demand for an apology.

whether its the current boner-boner, or imus, or coulter, or dick durbin, the demand for the invariably canned apology should be ridiculed to death forth-with.

This is a reposting - dates modified and typos corrected - of a diary originally posted February 19 which did not get that much traffic.  I have been rereading some of my old work, and thought this was worth reposting because of its relevance now

I suggest that you preach truth and do righteousness as you have been taught, whereinsoever that teaching may commend itself to your consciences and your judgments. For your consciences and your judgments we have not sought to bind; and see you to it that no other institution, no political party, no social circle, no religious organization, no pet ambitions put such chains on you as would tempt you to sacrifice one iota of the moral freedom of your consciences or the intellectual freedom of your judgments.

The words above were spoken at the 1888 Commencement of my alma mater, Haverford College, by Isaac Sharpless, then the college's president.  I have a framed copy posted in my classroom to remind me of how I view my role as a teacher.  And I offer them today because I think they are useful to bear in mind as we consider how we function as political creatures, especially but not exclusively at dailykos.

I suggest that you preach truth and do righteousness as you have been taught, whereinsoever that teaching may commend itself to your consciences and your judgments. For your consciences and your judgments we have not sought to bind; and see you to it that no other institution, no political party, no social circle, no religious organization, no pet ambitions put such chains on you as would tempt you to sacrifice one iota of the moral freedom of your consciences or the intellectual freedom of your judgments.

The words above were spoken at the 1888 Commencement of my alma mater, Haverford College, by Isaac Sharpless, then the college's president.  I have a framed copy posted in my classroom to remind me of how I view my role as a teacher.  And I offer them today because I think they are useful to bear in mind as we consider how we function as political creatures, especially but not exclusively at dailykos.

While Bill O'Reilly celebrates and defends the secular American Christmas holiday from imagined attack, he and the evangelicals we see on Meet the Press, you know the ones, they are the folks Barack Obama is courting, NEVER actually discuss what it is they supposedly have faith in. It is relatively insignificant politically, but illuminating intellectually. The reality is the intersection of religion and the State never REALLY happens - radical social conservatives are NOT acting based on any true religious beliefs - on abortion, sexual orientation or anything else. It is a conceit that we grant extremists for no good reason frankly. But there it is. Indeed, let us consider the fundamental religious belief of Christianity - the nature of Jesus, on the flip.  

It is not exactly a secret that the body politic has been infected in a terrible and debilitating way by the Bush administration and its enablers in and out of Congress.  And I'm not talking about their many disastrous laws, policies and actions (such as the Iraq War and the Patriot Act), but rather the damage they have done to the political process and political discourse in general (some of which will be discussed below).

The doctor has ordered up a dose of antibiotics in the form of a mid-term election, and we may be able to purge the infection from the House of Representatives and, with luck, the Senate also.  And who knows, maybe in 2008 we'll be able to disinfect the White House itself.

But even if we get the patient up and walking around, and for the time being Democrats achieve hegemony in the Federal government and in the statehouses, has the infection sunk in so deeply that it can never be completely eradicated?

Wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up first.

Voting is an important civic duty, a basic right...in a just society.

In a just society you would have a voice, a vote, directly on the issues.

Your ability to improve your country will depend not on your ability to talk to those who hold a similar viewpoint, but rather on your ability to hold substantive discussions with people who are across the political and ideological spectrum to focus on how we move forward to the brighter future that we all desire.

Apparently I am an idiot, because I constantly forget that what I find to be obviously reprehensible isn't to everyone. To some, it's just fine. Take my example today.

Today I emailed a copy of the video of the mercinaries in Iraq shooting at civilian cars to the tune of "Mystery Train." I only sent it to four people who I thought might reconsider their stances, or who would be as outraged as I by the video. One of the people I sent the video to was one of my two immediate supervisors. Both of my supervisors are very right-wing, which is odd to find in Massachusetts. However, the office I work in is fairly open to this sort of thing, we'll send joke emails, or every once in a while I'll get one of those chain emails saying how badly the Democrats screwed something up, but which are never truthful, etc., etc. And my supervisor was fine with my sending it, although he said, "Well, better off they shoot them then they get near them with a bomb." I was a little surprised that someone could just toss this aside.