A nation of victims
The Nation: Renana Brooks: ‘George W. Bush is generally regarded as a mangler of the English language [but a master] of emotional language — especially negatively charged emotional language.’ [→ READ ]
Absolutely fascinating:
President Bush, like many dominant personality types, uses dependency-creating language. He employs language of contempt and intimidation to shame others into submission and desperate admiration. …
Poll after poll demonstrates that Bush’s political agenda is out of step with most Americans’ core beliefs. Yet the public, their electoral resistance broken down by empty language and persuaded by personalization, is susceptible to Bush’s most frequently used linguistic technique: negative framework. A negative framework is a pessimistic image of the world. … Catastrophic words and phrases are repeatedly drilled into the listener’s head until the opposition feels such a high level of anxiety that it appears pointless to do anything other than cower.
Psychologist Martin Seligman, in his extensive studies of “learned helplessness,” showed that people’s motivation to respond to outside threats and problems is undermined by a belief that they have no control over their environment. …
Bush is a master at inducing learned helplessness in the electorate. He uses pessimistic language that creates fear and disables people from feeling they can solve their problems. …
People do not support Bush for the power of his ideas, but out of the despair and desperation in their hearts. Whenever people are in the grip of a desperate dependency, they won’t respond to rational criticisms of the people they are dependent on. They will respond to plausible and forceful statements and alternatives that put the American electorate back in touch with their core optimism.
![[Creative Commons logo]](/images/ccLogo.gif){kind=small}