Keys to the Rhetorical Kingdom
(or Whose Story Is This?)
I would like to offer my take on an ongoing item of debate. In Rebecca Solnit’s essay “Whose Story (and Country) Is This?” (https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-the-myth-of-real-america-just-wont-go-away/) she says:
“But in the news and political life, we’re still struggling over whose story it is, who matters, and who our compassion and interest should be directed at.”
Solnit correctly asserts that this issue of who gains our sympathy is “an immensely political question.” This struggle over narrative control is, she says, “one of the battles of our time.” Yet there is much about Solnit’s essay which I would like to challenge.
I want to look closely at Solnit’s campaign to correct “the misdistribution of sympathy” that she’s observed. This misdistribution, she says, “is epidemic.” Solnit starts by analyzing the media coverage that white rural Americans got, post-2016-election. I certainly recall public radio stories on this supposedly hidden population who came out of some kind of woodwork to put Mr. Trump in office. “The exhortations are everywhere,” Solnit says, claiming that there are calls for all us urban literate types to recognize and empathize with yokels, even if they are hateful.
