“Read my lips”
Mark Thompson, former director –general of the BBC, now chief executive of the New York Times Company and writes a compellingly, plodding argument free and less controversial in his “ What’s Gone Wrong With the Language of Politics?” until they reveal hidden flaws or virtues, and can be judged for their political correctness to be part of the public debate whose decline he laments.
Authenticism is not a synonym for authentic, but quite the opposite, truthiness, which is not “truth” as most people conceive it but a belief that came from common sense ideas that irrespective of evidence, logic or analysis, just feel right. It is the popular belief that comes from “ Fornicate Under Command of the King.”
“Rhetorical rationalism” is his phrase for a discourse of scientists and officials, is now under sustained attack and is failing, in critical instances to convince a public that no longer prepared to grant it automatic respect.
Like George H W Bush’s “Read my lips: no new taxes” in 1988 at the Republican National convention as he accepted the nomination on August 18 written by speechwriter Peggy Noonan, Margaret Thatcher’s renowned for her no-nonsense turn of phrase “The lady’s not for turning” in her speech to the Conservative Party Conference on 10 October 1980, are some of the most memorable political quotes of the last quarter-century. Tony Blair’s quote “ The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.” And “ sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.”
Barack Obama’s quote “Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.” or “you can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.”
Donald Trump “ If you are going to be truly successful, then set yourself apart from everyone else. Go beyond the limits of what classifies the average person and be exceptional.” Or “ what separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.”
In the background is “politics and the English Language” the influential 1946 essay and “ Animal Farm” by George Orwell makes a case for a straightforward public speech and its eccentricity.
Thompson Suggests the caveat pricking a bubble of automatic Orwell reference is the difference between British left and right.
The language of Authenticity, which simply a means of allying with part of the electorate through their grievances and their prejudices to instil claims primacy for personal experience and is deeply dismissive of those in power.
American writer and surgeon Atul Gawande whose speech to the California Institute of Technology described science as a “commitment to a systematic way of thinking” that stands in contrast to the wisdom of divinity and experience and common sense.”
Thompson central focal point is what we know can be based on a variety of non-rational beliefs. A child’s illness can follow an injection, winters are still cold, what is with global warming. Thompson will be content only after we challenge, we get closer to the true nature of things, and to do that we require a much more demanding public discourse than we have at present.
The Galileo was right about the sun revolving around the earth and the Vatican was wrong. The injections on children especially the MMR vaccine caused deaths to children and denied them by distrustful mothers.
Bothe Gawande and Thompson see a rejection of scientific evidence as a kind of collective madness or blame the media.
The MMR vaccine debate where a mum said “ I’m just a mom and I want to keep my baby safe” could have more force than arguments of the scientific establishment.”
Thompson essentially takes a quote from the social anthropologist and climate change think-tank Benny Peiser Director of Global Warming Policy Foundation, “ Fundamentally, these are social, ethical and economic questions that cannot be answered by science alone but require careful consideration by economists and social commentators.”
The continuing demonization of both George W Bush and Tony Blair for the Iraq debacle is, essentially, the product of another shift; from the view of war as field of honour and duty to one of futility, from the hymn that proclaims “ love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice” to Wilfred Ownes; “ The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est.
In another passage Thompson writes “ The grip of narrative – of lions led by donkeys, of a country betrayed by its political and military elites – only grew with time”.