I'm on the road again.
In the political world of parlaimentary politics people do not trust politicians. They see their gestures (bodily and verbal) as unnatural and rehearsed. They wear a public mas,
Don Watson, writing in Death Sentence, puts it this way:
"...people notice something unnatural in their gestures and something distracted in their expression because the politician can't hide the fact that he's waiting for the chance to say what he has been primed to say, and when he gets that chance he jumps at it with unantural haste."
They speak to the commonplace without expressing the ambiguities or contradictions of a situation. They indicate that the politicians are more interested in marketing their message, than saying what they mean is a clear enough way so that the electorate can understand.
The tacit assumption of this kind of discourse is that the electorate is dumb and stupid. They are not really acknowledged as citizens.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at March 2, 2004 09:02 PM | TrackBackI agree with the assessment of the politician's rhetoric, but given the fact that these same politicians keep getting re-elected, what other conclusion can one draw except that the electorate is dumb and stupid.
Posted by: Joe Reeves on March 9, 2004 05:11 AMMaybe we voters think in the dogeared language of the politicians.
Or maybe we have little choice but to vote for them. We see the studied gestures, detect the rehearsed lines, and know the dogeared words.
We can read them like we can read the media. But we are left to choose from amongst them.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on March 15, 2004 08:12 PM