rhetoric | The Direction of Intention

Don The Hazmat [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 18, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Last night while Kerri, 20 and I were playing a game of Rummikub, Rob texted. He asked, tongue firmly planted in his cheek, “Wow! You’re so close to the (RNC) convention, are you going to swing by?” I responded without thinking, “Only if I had a hazmat suit.”

Protection from toxic waste.

Before dinner and before playing the game, 20 told me that earlier in the day, while he was driving, he caught himself pondering what he would do to survive if the red tide sweeps in, stains the White House, and reconfigures Social Security and privatizes Medicare as is promised by their conservative blueprint for authoritarian rule, Project 2025. I asked, “Did you ever imagine in your lifetime that you’d be worried about the overthrow of democracy by a populist dictator?” His dad was a WWII veteran, as was Kerri’s father. My mom was a little girl living in Pearl Harbor on the day it was attacked because my grandfather provided services for the navy. In a single generation, the very threat our elders, our “greatest generation,” fought to eliminate, has overtaken the minds and hearts of the Grand Old Party. They’re currently holding a convention in Milwaukee to forward an agenda that would appall Abraham Lincoln but Adolph Hitler would applaud. “Did you ever think…?”

It’s too late for hazmat suits. The toxin is already racing through our system.

In this past week we’ve repeatedly heard the phrase, “We need to tone down the rhetoric on both sides.” It’s not the rhetoric we need to tone down, it’s the reality we need to face. We’re pretending that this an election like any other election, that it is “systems usual.” It is not. Our two party system is now a one party system attempting to fortify our young democracy against a dictatorial leader and his followers who are filled with fascist dreams. The dialed-up rhetoric of Democrats is akin to sounding an alarm warning of a system-annihilating storm. The rhetoric of the reds is the storm.

Unlike the ideal outlined by our founders, this is not a party of conservative values debating with a party of progressive values to find a compromise path forward: a system designed to achieve balance from opposing points of view. This is an ultranationalist aggression attempting to dismantle our system of governance and replace it with one that forcibly suppresses – and eliminates – any form of opposition.

The body dies when the toxin is ignored and allowed to attack the internal organs.

We play Rummikub with 20 to unplug from the worries of the day. Last night while we played, a terrific storm roared through the region, shaking the house with wind and buckets of rain. Dogga paced as lightning flashed. It was hard to concentrate on the game. I couldn’t help seeing the storm as a metaphor (of course…). With so much toxic waste spewing just up the road, and potentially washing away democracy’s foundation, it is no longer possible to unplug. It’s no longer wise to unplug. Not if we want our good house to survive the red storm.

an image from the archives: House On Fire, watercolor

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read Kerri’s blogpost about THE GAME

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Filed under: Awakening, DR Thursday, Edges, Identity, Metaphor, Perspective, Seeing | Tagged: Adolph HItler, artistry, authoritarian, Constitution, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, dictator, division, fascism, founding fathers, GOP, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, populist, rhetoric, RNC 2024, Rummikub, storm, story, studio melange, the melange, toxic, toxic waste, two party system | 1 Comment »

Live Your Words [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on November 20, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Language is among the most powerful yet rarely acknowledged and mostly discounted forces on earth. We name our experiences, we story our lives with words. Alter a single word this way or that and the story of a lifetime takes on a completely different cast. Success. Failure. Together. Alone.

Currently we are witness to an aspiring autocrat label fellow citizens as vermin and thugs. A well-worn page from the despot playbook. Dehumanization of others is the first step in approving, priming, unleashing, and then normalizing violence. If history teaches us anything it is that language is not only capable of creating unspeakable beauty, it is also capable of unleashing unimaginable horror. This is not playground rhetoric or locker room talk. This is laying the groundwork for brutality. White. Black. Supremacy. Equality. Community. Tribe. Division. Togetherness.

Language matters (education matters).

Consider this simple phrase chalked onto a park bench: I With. This phrase struck me as particularly potent yet unappreciated. I accompany you. I am with you. I walk with you through this life. I choose to stand with you. With. I.

No word is more dynamic and intoxicating than “I”. There is no more necessary or formidable preposition than “with”. I with love? I with hate? I with unity? I with division? I with open-heart? I with closed-mind? I fear. I embrace.

The great power in language is in the words we choose to live.

read Kerri’s blogpost about I WITH

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Filed under: Education, Identity, Language, Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, choice, closed mind, community, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, despot, division, equality, hate, history, I, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, labels, language, lessons from history, love, open heart, propaganda, rhetoric, story, studio melange, the melange, togetherness, unity, with | 1 Comment »

Turn And Take A Hard Look [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on June 2, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Systems are living things and like all living things will fight to the death when threatened. It is, I believe, what is at play in these un-united-united-states.

I love the irreverence of the questions taken from a mock conference agenda, published in the October 2017 issue of Real Simple Magazine. Who bears the bulk of moral responsibility and what’s the appropriate punishment? Beneath the humor, the real question is made clear: why are women expected to mold their bodies, often in torturous ways, to fit an impossible ideal? It is a centuries old phenomenon.

There is a very telling photograph from 2017 of an all male White House task force discussing health benefits that included women’s health issues. This photograph is nothing new. The ideal represented within it, is ubiquitous. A headline from The Guardian reads “These 25 Republicans -All White Men – Just Voted To Ban Abortion In Alabama.”

A system is a living thing. It will fight to the death when threatened.

This paragraph from Rolling Stone Magazine [May 17, 2019] captures the essence of the fight, the core of the system that is under threat: The Republican movement behind forced-birth bills is truly ignorance allied with power, as James Baldwin once warned us about. The rhetoric may be more vociferous and reckless now than it was when the religious right was first revving up, but it is no less cynical. Even if it escapes the lips or is written or signed into law by women like Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama, the primary goal of that revanchist talk has always been to take America back to a time when the word of white men went all but unquestioned.

“The unquestioned word of white men.” The system as designed is now being questioned. And so, ignorance allies with power. The Big Lie. The Republican party is afraid to investigate-and-talk-about what happened on January 6th because of what an investigation will reveal. Ignore-ance.

Taking America back to a time when the word of white men went all but unquestioned. We never actually left that time but had certainly broached the subject of progress toward the promise of equality for all. And so, the system is fighting. It is threatened like never before so it is fighting like never before. Voter suppression laws. The legal assault being mounted on a woman’s right to choose. Fearmongering BLM rhetoric like Ron Johnson’s inanity.

Black Lives Matter. Women’s Rights. Voters’ Rights, Civil Rights…all embodiment of the ideals that we espouse and yet, all are threats to the system. All ask questions of the unquestioned white men.

In a speech yesterday, President Joe Biden said that America is based on an idea. “It’s the greatest idea in the long history of humankind. An idea that we’re all created equal in the image of Almighty God. That we’re all entitled to dignity, as my father would say, and respect, decency, and honor. Love of neighbor. They’re not empty words, but the vital, beating heart of our nation.“

Division is the control-mechanism designed into the system to keep the word of the white men unquestioned. Colonists everywhere installed the same mechanism in their colonies. Powerful women, powerful citizens of all colors and sexual orientation, united, are a threat to the system. And so it fights. It lies. It blocks scrutiny. It screams that Black Lives are a more dangerous threat than a white insurrection on the capitol. Antifa! Socialism! Fear! Divide the people. Keep them fighting each other. It’s a strategy that’s worked for centuries.

It is more than time that the idea of America, at long last, punch through the wall of the system and fulfill its promise, its highest ideal. What is there to fear in equality?

Pre-torn jeans made of elastic. Who bears the bulk of the moral responsibility? Beneath the humor, the real question comes clear: do we have the capacity, at long last, to stop molding ourselves in tortuous ways to fit an impossibly conflicted system? Can we turn and take a hard look at our empty words and fill them with the promise, the beating heart of the idea? Equality. United.

read Kerri’s blog post about Pretorn Jeans