Example of a bad sentence:
"Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities" (P. 200)
This sentence, as we discussed in class, came off to me as nothing more than an oversimplification and idealization of how the world really works. Arendt paints the world in a shade of white and black in this sentence, when reality is nothing but a shade of moral grey. As I mentioned in class, while discussing this question, "the art of politics is the ability to control your environment" (a quote from the late Hunter S. Thompson in "Kingdom of Fear"). It is impossible to control an environment in a situation where you are not willing to use force to destroy, or use words to veil your true intentions. To say politics is anything less than careful and strategic use of knowledge and trickery is nothing short of...to put it sharply, naive. It is unfortunate that we live in a time where this quote, which serves as a model for an ideal form of politik, presents itself as an unobtainable dream in the current age.
I don't want to seem like a complete pessimist, because in reality I'm not. However, I think with any type of optimism should come a heavy dosage of reality, and this quote lacks it. We live in a society today where honesty and transparency is a crime. My example is Wikileaks.
Wikileaks has published thousands upon thousands of cables and documents that incriminate world leaders in heinous acts of violence and corruption on a daily basis, outright proving politicians as liars, and opening the public's eyes to the horrors that ours and other country's militaries have committed at war. How was Wikileaks rewarded for their devotion to governmental transparency? Lawsuits, arrests, trials, and even some U.S. Senators called for the assassination of Julian Assange, the leader of Wikileaks.
I feel this is ample evidence alone to prove my point that politics is not run by the idea that "words are not empty and deeds not brutal", and where "words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities", but most importantly, where "deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities." These statements may have been true in 1958, but it is not true today.
I agree with Tom. I think that his example of wikileaks serves as great evidence of the crime of truth which we see in the modern political arena.
ReplyDeleteArendt in her writing is absolutist in her analysis of power, strength, force etc. I felt that her dissection of these key political concerns were inaccessible at times to the reader. Her definitions and equation like value of these terms (power < violence) made it difficult to 1) apply these prospectively to today's world and 2) try and speculate what she was referring to in 1950somthing.
Her quote:
"Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities"
I wonder if political power, true political power ever resembled anything close to the ideological scenario she depicts. If it is not referring to the sort of manipulative, yellow politics that we see today where ones actual public convictions are a rarity then WHAT kind of political power is she referring to? And what would she call today's political realities? In class we decided she would have most likely called it Tyranny but I find this lacking.