Political Anger at Trump, Good/Persuasive Writing and The New York Times Columnist Whose Words Fail Him

For over fifty years, I have taught persuasive writing and speaking under the title in my advanced course, Persuasion.  I have won a host of teaching awards, lectured widely, and made innumerable media appearances.

There is one irrefutable rule: do not let your anger interfere with your writing.

Today, there may be no topic on which this is more applicable than writing about our active president, Donald J. Trump.

In all of my teaching in all of my courses, I have emphasized the importance of what my University of Pittsburgh liberal professor,r Dr. Otis Walter stressed in his works, such as Speaking to Inform and Persuade and others: provide evidence for each general statement, as the unsupported general statement is never sufficient.  Another renowned Pitt professor, Dr. Robert P. Newman, wrote the book on evidence, also the title of his main lifetime work, Evidence.

So, if you say, for example, “The president has advocated policies that the American people have clearly rejected,” you must provide specific recommendations that the president has made and evidence that the public has rejected them.  The evidence for the rejection can take the form of voting losses, leadership opposition, reluctant testimony from those allies of the president opposing his policies, responsible pundit criticism etc.

Walter called the evidence “supporting materials.”  Newman wrote on what is considered valid evidence, never including promoting the absence of evidence.

I have rarely read an article by an intelligent author as bereft of evidence and supporting material than allegedly center-conservative David Brooks’ pretentious article in The New York Times in mid-March, titled “What’s Happening is Not Normal.  America Needs an Uprising That is Not Normal.”

Brooks’ thesis is that President Donald Trump “is threatening all of that,” with “that” being systems that endanger institutions that “make our lives sweet, loving and creative, rather than nasty, brutish and short.”  Brooks then articulates the motive: “[T]he acquisition of power — power for its own sake.”

Brooks then lists objects of Trumpian attacks, such as law firms, universities, NATO, etc.

Nowhere – nowhere — does he attribute teleological motives or purpose of the Trump Administration, beyond the unprovable imputation of solely maximizing power.

The Trump Administration needs to answer this charge with actual examples, testimony or statistics, which in any accusation and/or response also needs to be specific and responsive, and Trump supporters have done so: for example, they aver, lawfare needs to be opposed for its unfairness in the American system of jurisprudence; universities’ anti-Semitism needs to be met head-on as intrinsically and ethically wrong; and NATO needs to pay its dues commensurate with its political interests.

Brooks then jumps to the efforts to oppose the allegedly evil single-purposed Trump Administration and how that purpose is insufficient, without even speculating on Administration political goals.

Then, mid-article comes the Brooksian denouement: “The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.”

Stopped from what?  Pursuing what?  Power to what end?

The closest Brooks comes to focusing on an answer, while still not articulating the question, is to suggest that “In a million ways, the scholars at universities help us understand ourselves and our world,” producing “magic.” Ah, but then his inner Hamlet takes over: “But like all institutions, they have their flaws. Many have allowed themselves to become shrouded in a stifling progressivism that tells half the country: Your voices don’t matter.”

Throughout my life I have provided commentary on politics and rhetoric, and I am one of the few who has been cancelled by the right and left for being insufficiently pro-Trump or insufficiently anti-Trump.

My answer to all the political confusion today and angry pundits is to make your arguments clear and evidence-based.  It is that basis on which rational people can make reasonable policy choices, not on the issue of how you can weaken a president, in this case President Trump, whom your outrage tells you to oppose without detailing the necessary changes you want and why.