Kenneth Burke

<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" style="" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span tiempos="Tiempos" text="Text" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div>no lnx twt</div><div>Trump vaccine that actually works</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly September 9, 2020</div><div>
</div><div><b>If you talked politics over the last few days with Trump supporters, you probably got a good lesson in how they have become inoculated against information that contradicts their assumptions about the president.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the Atlantic about how Trump referred to Americans who have died in war as <b>“losers” and “suckers”</b> was published last Thursday—just in time to ruminate over the three-day weekend. It included three to four sources per quote and was eventually confirmed by the Associated Press, the Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, and the New York Times. As David Frum documented, the reports seemed plausible based on all of the other times Trump attacked members of the military. The silences are also resounding.</div><div>
</div><div>Amid the clamor, it’s easy to overlook those who are not yelling, those who are keeping silent. Where are the senior officers of the United States armed forces, serving and retired—the men and women who worked most closely on military affairs with President Trump? Has any one of them stepped forward to say, “That’s not the man I know”?</div><div>
</div><div>How many wounded warriors have stepped forward to attest to Trump’s care and concern for them? How many Gold Star families have stepped forward on Trump’s behalf? How many service families?</div><div>
</div><div>The silence is resounding. And when such voices do speak, they typically describe a president utterly lacking in empathy to grieving families, wholly uncomprehending of sacrifice and suffering.</div><div>
</div><div><b>It wasn’t long before Trump responded with attacks against Goldberg, The Atlantic, and Laurene Powell Jobs, the magazine’s majority owner.</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Most of the president’s supporters didn’t need the prompt, however. It quickly became labelled “fake news.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had been preparing to launch a book tour this week, defended Trump by describing a president most of us have never seen.</span></div><div>
</div><div>While Sanders says that she has witnessed Trump showing heart and demonstrating respect, we’ve never actually witnessed that kind of behavior from him in public. It makes her denial much less plausible. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">But her description of the president is something his supporters desperately want to believe. So they utilize the closure mechanisms Trump has provided for them by calling The Atlantic report “fake news,” which automatically makes the president a victim. It is exactly the process described by Julian Sanchez in his explanation of the term </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b style="">“epistemic closure.</b>” = terministic screen</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Over the weekend a chorus arose asking for John Kelly, who was present during most of the discussions cited by Goldberg, to address what happened. Underlying that call is the assumption that the former White House Chief of Staff could actually clear things up</b>. While I think that he should do so for the sake of his own conscience, it is absurd to think that Trump supporters would listen to him any more than they did when former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called the president a threat to our Constitution.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The president’s supporters are not going to change their minds about the most dishonest and corrupt man to ever occupy the Oval Office. While it remains important to document his incompetence and malfeasance, it isn’t likely to have any impact politically. Trump has one vaccine that actually works: He’s inoculated his supporters against anything that might threaten their loyalty to him.</span></div></span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" style="" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" style="" face="Times New Roman">Intellectual Affairs columnist for <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Inside Higher Ed</em> <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/taxonomy/term/789" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Scott McLemee</a> has written an excellent piece on KBS 2011 at Clemson. Here's a brief excerpt:</font></p><h3 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Attitudes Toward Kenneth Burke</font></h3><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">. . . The triennial meeting of the Kenneth Burke Society, held at Clemson University over the Memorial Day weekend, drew a diverse crowd, numbering just over one hundred people -- with at least a third, by my estimate, being graduate students or junior faculty. The Burkological elders told tales of the days when incorporating more than a <a href="http://www.parlorpress.com/shakespeare.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">couple</a> of citations from “KB” in a dissertation would get you scolded by an adviser. Clearly things have changed in the meantime. Tables near registration were crowded with secondary literature from the past decade or so, as well as a couple of posthumous <a href="http://www.parlorpress.com/symbolic.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">collections</a> of KB's work. The <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/55732694/8th-Triennial-Conference-of-the-Kenneth-Burke-Society" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">program</a> featured papers on the implications of his ideas for composition textbooks, disability studies, jazz, environmental activism, and the headscarf controversy.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more: <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee_on_burke_society" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee_on_burke_society</a></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><h3 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Editor</font></h3><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://kbjournal.org/users/david-blakesley" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">David Blakesley</a>, Clemson University</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><h2 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fast Facts</font></h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 700;">Conference Dates</span>: July 16-19, 2020
<span style="font-weight: 700;">University of Maryland</span>
<span style="font-weight: 700;">Speakers</span>: Barbara Biesecker, Theon Hill, Kyle Jensen
<span style="font-weight: 700;">Proposal Deadline</span>: January 31, 2020
<span style="font-weight: 700;">Submit Proposal to</span>: Portal Opening Soon
<span style="font-weight: 700;">Conference Organizer</span>: Damien Pfister, University of Maryland, <a href="mailto:dsp@umd.edu" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">dsp@umd.edu</a>
</font></p><h3 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"><a href="http://kbjournal.org/kbs2020" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Read the Call for Papers</font></a></h3><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><h2 class="block-title" style="margin: 0px; padding: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(220, 220, 220); border-top: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255);" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-variant-numeric="font-variant-numeric" normal="normal" font-variant-east-asian="font-variant-east-asian" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" small-caps="small-caps" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Submit to KB Journal</font></h2><div class="block-content content" style="padding: 10px; border-top: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Click on this Submit button to visit the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">KB Journal</em> submission interface at <a href="https://parlorpress.submittable.com/submit/26364" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Submittable</a>:</font></p></div></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">deaDLINE JULY 2019</font></p><h2 class="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.1; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-size-adjust: auto; text-align: center;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">19th Biennial Conference of the <br class="" style="box-sizing: inherit;" />Rhetoric Society of America<br class="" style="box-sizing: inherit;" />Portland, OR<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />May 21 - May 24, 2020</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: center;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conference Co-Chairs:  Michelle Ballif, Diane Davis, Karma Chávez, Byron Hawk</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The theme of the RSA 2020 biennial conference, “Rhetoric / Hospitality,” asks us to contemplate hospitality as a gesture of generous reception of the other, one that invites inclusive rhetorical practices and relations, but also as a gesture of sovereign power that asserts the right to welcome or to refuse the other. The theme of hospitality asks us to deliberate about how rhetorical practices can open doors, invite new solidarities, make new understandings possible; it also asks us to consider how they can be used to foreclose such possibilities, as evidenced daily in today’s political and social climate. We need not look far to see multiple instances of inhospitable rhetorical practices that fuel discriminatory stereotypes and prejudices.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" style="" face="Times New Roman">==</font></p>