After the rhetorical nightmare that has been the last seven years of ill-delivered mushmouth lies, can we elect someone that can hire speech writers or even deliver the speeches they write?
Obama says yes.
This election is great. The internets has turned it into a goddamned jungle gym of interesting things where previously only stood boring cardboard cutouts made of recycled newspaper from the 1950s. They report shit like sports on tv, and there’s hell of pornographic levels of numbers for statistics fags like me that love to plow into a watershed of bubbly phantom bits of information.
I have one more note related to the presidential speech tag clouds. There are large chunks of American history when “constitution” was a regularly-used word in government address. Now is not one of those times. Here’s a quote:
I have seen nothing since I came here to change my opinion . . . but abundant reason to be convinced that our affairs are in a more distressed, ruinous, and deplorable condition than they have been in since the commencement of the war. By a faithful laborer then in the cause; by a man who is daily injuring his private estate without even the smallest earthly advantage not common to all in case of a favorable issue to the dispute; by one who wishes the prosperity of America most devoutly and sees or thinks he sees it on the brink of ruin, you are beseeched, most earnestly, my dear Colonel Harrison, to exert yourself in endeavoring to rescue your country by (let me add) sending your ablest and best men to Congress. These characters must not slumber nor sleep at home in such times of pressing danger; they must not content themselves in the enjoyment of places of honor or profit in their own country while the common interests of America are moldering and sinking into irretrievable (if a remedy is not soon applied) ruin, in which theirs also must ultimately be involved.
If I was to be called upon to draw a picture of the times and of men from what I have seen, heard, and in part know, I should in one word say that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seems to have laid fast hold of most of them; that speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seems to have got the better of every other consideration and almost of every order of men; that party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day, while the momentous concerns of an empire–a great and accumulated debt, ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit (which in their consequences is the want of everything)–are but secondary considerations and postponed from day to day, from week to week, as if our affairs wear the most promising aspect. After drawing this picture, which from my soul I believe to be a true one, I need not repeat to you that I am alarmed and wish to see my countrymen roused.
That was George Washington in 1778. As you go back farther in time, they use more words and more diverse words, and the speeches are so dense that they had to have been given slowly. It’s jarring.
The above tag cloud shows the popularity, frequency, and trends in the usages of words within speeches, official documents, declarations, and letters written by the Presidents of the US between 1776 – 2007 AD.
Terrorist and Iraq have been the biggest words the past few years (6 years of terrer!), and economy’s been big since the 70s. There’s some very telling things inside these walls of text. It’s like flash cards of four year periods.
Gratuitously overmentioning family for stupid emotional points was invented by Ronald Reagan and crew in 1986! Seriously. It became a buzzword in 1986. It’s only been 20 years. We can overcome the bullshit rhetoric in politics and be real (and still lie about it even). We did it for hundreds of years.
Have a look at Franklin Roosevelt’s third (!) inaugural address (1941) or the social security announcement (1935), or . Those are serious problems. What the fuck do we think we’re doing now? p.s. Those were real speech writers like damn. That shit jerks tears.
