Writing for the Brookings Institute, Linda Schacht usefully highlighted
how the Democratic National Convention, 2024, showed that “a 21st century rhetoric can still inspire in a digital-visual world.” But her short discussion didn’t seek to get into the heart of Democratic mindfulness—the sense of American humanity—that was expressed across leading voices.
Those voices evinced intuitions of the best in us which ensures and advances the ever-incomplete “more perfect union” of American diversity (Our republican democracy which is Our democratic republic). Though the “spiritual” source of those kindred intuitions had no common leading constellation of values explicitly—and no explicit conception of cohering personal, interpersonal, cultural, social, and political relevance—the spirit of dearly held values belonging together was clear—and joyous.
Though everyone was highly engaged with feeling and thinking beyond emanci-
pation from the past, emancipatory interest couldn’t be ignored—which wasn’t primarily a political issue. It was a matter of how social life is distorting our humanity—how consumerist and economistic sociocentrism was betraying us—well-expressed by Barack:
We live…in a culture that puts a premium on things that don’t last – money, fame, status, likes. We chase the approval of strangers on our phones; we build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves and then wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other – and in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other.Before Kamala emphasized that we have “a precious, fleeting opportunity
to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past,” Michelle championed “the chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division and hate that have consumed us and continue pursuing the unfinished promise of this great nation.”
“Rhetoric,” you say. Yes.
Mere rhetoric? Michelle says “it’s up to all of us to be the antidote to the darkness and division.”
A physician wants partnership from their client: “It’s up to you, too, to make your life healthy.”
Parents want to cultivate their child’s fruitful independence such that “it’s up to you to make your life matter.” So, too, for teaching, which parenting is too
at best: concerted cultivation.
Values of character emerge from the character of valuing.
Leadership doesn’t work by edict. It works by appellant motivating.
Rhetoric has been a classical specialty not because instrumental power can be wielded through speech, but because words—The Word as form of life—may bind ideals to the challenges of reality, of making real progress, of making progress realistically by commitment and persistence.
Rhetoric falls into being mere rhetoric due to one’s complacency toward what appeals as worthy basis for orienting action and one’s life.
Words remain important because they work to constitute a world worth minding, a life, intimacy, family, friendship, solidarity.
In upcoming discussion, I want to express kindredness, belonging, and binding as familial (isomorphic) sense.
next—> for the best of America: being a Democrat 2024
