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Politics, Persuasion, and Poetry
Poetry in its highest sense seeks truth, coherence, and a vision of reality that unites the temporal and the eternal, the personal and the universal.
The great poets who employ something like a “cosmic voice” speak from beyond partisan quarrels and transient fashion, reminding humankind of permanent things—order, beauty, justice, and the unity of all creation (Leef; Devlin; Ames).
My personal description of poetry has long been the following: The highest purpose of poetry is to express in deliberate, truthful, crystalline language what it feels like to experience certain aspects of human life. Thus, much great poetry focuses on three subjects: love, beauty, and death.
Humanity from the time of its inception (or at least since the Fall) has experienced events involving those subjects, and they have caused deep, intense feelings that the human psyche has needed to express.
The “cosmic voice” can be understood to express the universal reality of human emotion in its raw intensity through language that can be grasped and recognized—even if it must often work through paradox and other forms of literary language devices.
Such a voice does not flatter the crowd but calls it upward, inviting the soul to transcend the narrow confines of appetite and ideology. It stretches time and space, allowing the reader to glimpse a moral horizon that relativistic culture and mass entertainment seek to obscure (Leef).
The Decline of Poetry in Public Life
In contemporary America, high poetry has largely disappeared from the public square; fewer than ten percent of citizens report reading even a single poem in a given year (“Politics of Poetry”). Critics have observed that poetry has retreated into academic enclaves, where it is often politicized, trivialized, or made self-referential rather than addressed to the common culture (Leef; Devlin).
This retreat has grave consequences because a society that no longer listens to genuine poetry loses one of its strongest checks on propaganda and ideological frenzy. When the imagination is not nourished by disciplined, truth-seeking art, it becomes vulnerable to cheaper substitutes that mimic poetic power while serving partisan ends (Ames).
Political Rhetoric as Surrogate Poetry
The vacuum left by serious poetry has been filled, in part, by political speech that borrows poetic techniques—imagery, rhythm, metaphor, antithesis—not to illuminate reality but to move “men to action or alliance” (“Politics of Poetry”).
Speechwriters openly acknowledge that their goal is persuasion and agenda-setting rather than patient education; language is crafted to captivate attention and stir emotion in a distracted populace (Dilber).
Literary devices used by poets—alliteration, imagery, parallelism, and antimetabole—appear in many of the most memorable modern speeches (“Rhetorical Devices”). John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country” exemplifies how chiasmus and rhythm can engrave an idea on the public mind with almost incantatory force.
When Persuasion Masquerades as Propaganda
Persuasion becomes propaganda when the deliberate, systematic shaping of perception and behavior serves the hidden intent of the speaker rather than the good of the hearer (Jowett and O’Donnell). Scholars of communication define propaganda as the organized attempt to manipulate cognitions and direct behavior in a way that furthers the propagandist’s aims, often by using false or misleading information (“Political Propaganda”).
In that sense, propaganda is not merely strong or forceful speech but a corruption of language itself, dressing deception in the garments of poetic beauty. Words cease to be windows onto reality and become tools for obscuring it, fostering confusion, distrust, and cynicism among citizens (“Political Propaganda”).
The Poetic Surface of Modern Speeches
Because political rhetoric must compete in a noisy media environment, it increasingly relies on stylistic intensifiers that resemble poetic adornment (Dilber). Emotive vocabulary, simple syntax, repetitive structures, and parallel clauses are deployed to reach inattentive listeners at an affective level (“Rhetorical Devices”).
These devices can ennoble public discourse when they express honest conviction and point toward realities accessible to reason and experience. Yet they can also serve as a velvet glove over an iron fist, smoothing over contradictions in policy and concealing the true costs of political projects (“Political Propaganda”).
Content Emptied, Form Retained
In genuine poetry, form and content serve one another; the music of the line clarifies rather than conceals meaning. In much twenty-first-century political speech, however, poetic form—cadence, symmetry, metaphor—is preserved while substantive content is hollowed out (Ames).
As one observer notes, contemporary cultural elites often prefer verbal display to engagement with enduring truths, elevating slogans and activist catchphrases over disciplined reflection (Ames). The result is rhetoric that sounds profound while remaining vague, elevating feeling over thought and identity over principle.
Emotional Choreography and Manufactured Unity
Modern campaign speeches illustrate how poetic devices choreograph collective emotion, producing surges of hope, anger, or solidarity on command (Dilber). Through repeated metaphors, rhythmic chants, and staged crescendos, speakers offer audiences a sense of unity that may have little basis in shared understanding (“Political Propaganda”).
This emotional unity, grounded in sentiment rather than truth, is a hallmark of propaganda (Jowett and O’Donnell). Citizens are not invited to deliberate but to feel together, often against a demonized “other” whose humanity is reduced to caricature.
Contemporary political discourse frequently illustrates this tendency through the use of historically charged labels—such as comparisons to fascism or authoritarianism—directed at political opponents, including Donald Trump.
From the Muse to the Machine
Historically, poets answered to a muse—an intuition of beauty and order that could not be fully subordinated to political calculation (Leef; Devlin). Even when poets engaged political themes, they did so under the constraint of truth-telling, often placing them at odds with power (Devlin).
In the twenty-first century, many of the most rhetorically gifted writers work not as independent poets but as speechwriters, marketers, and narrative technicians embedded in political machinery (“Politics of Poetry”; Dilber). Their allegiance tends to lie with electoral success or ideological advance rather than the slow discipline of contemplating what is true and good (Ames).
Propaganda as Perversion of Poetic Power
Because propaganda seeks to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior, it exploits the same imaginative faculties that poetry once honored and educated (Jowett and O’Donnell). Metaphors that ought to deepen understanding are repurposed to compress complex realities into emotionally charged images—walls, storms, plagues, and saviors (“Political Propaganda”).
In such language, the cosmic dimension collapses into the partisan; transcendence is traded for mobilization. Citizens are urged to choose sides in a perpetual struggle rather than contemplate the unity of all created things (Ames).
The Threat to American Freedom
Propaganda threatens American freedom not only by spreading falsehoods but by corroding the capacities required for self-government: attention, memory, judgment, and trust (“Political Propaganda”; Jowett and O’Donnell). Sustained exposure to disinformation fosters withdrawal from civic engagement, leaving decisions to unaccountable elites.
When citizens cannot distinguish poetic truth from manipulative rhetoric, they become susceptible to messages that flatter fear or desire. In a constitutional republic dependent on informed consent, such susceptibility opens the door to soft despotism even without overt repression (Jowett and O’Donnell).
Recognizing the Poetic Techniques of Propaganda
To defend liberty, citizens must learn to recognize the poetic devices propaganda uses to bypass reason (“Political Propaganda”). These include metaphor and symbol that frame opponents as existential threats, rhythmic repetition that produces unthinking assent, and emotional appeals that offer catharsis without clarity (“Rhetorical Devices”; Jowett and O’Donnell). Such analysis requires not cynicism but discernment.
Restoring Poetry as Antidote
The recovery of serious poetry is not a luxury but a cultural necessity (Devlin; Ames). By reintroducing citizens to art that reveres truth and beauty above ideology, poetry inoculates the imagination against counterfeit enchantments (Leef).
Poetry trains attention, demands patience, and rewards rereading—virtues that directly oppose the habits formed by soundbites, memes, and sloganeering speeches (Devlin; Ames).
Citizens as Stewards of Language
If propaganda is to be defeated, citizens must see themselves as stewards rather than consumers of language (Jowett and O’Donnell). This stewardship includes rejecting rhetorical violence, refusing manipulative content, and demanding clarity and accountability from those who seek office (“Political Propaganda”).
The Battle for the American Mind
The struggle against propaganda is a battle for the American mind and heart, a contest over whether language will serve truth or power (Jowett and O’Donnell). When poetic energies are monopolized by political strategists, the republic stands on dangerous ground (Ames).
Redeeming Poetic Speech
The techniques of poetry have not been lost; they have been surrendered to politics, where persuasion easily slides into propaganda (“Politics of Poetry”; Ames). If the United States is to remain free, citizens must reclaim poetry as a vehicle of truth and resist propaganda as a counterfeit poetics of power (Devlin; Jowett and O’Donnell).
Works Cited
- Ames, Aaron. “Darwin, Bureaucratese, and the Decline of Poetry” The Imaginative Conservative, January 29, 2024.
- Devlin, Bradley. “After the Inauguration, Conservatives Need to Rediscover Poetry.” The American Conservative, January 27, 2021.
- Dilber, Ceyhan. “Rhetorical Structure of Election Speeches..” Journal of International Social Research, 2018.
- Jowett, Garth S., and Victoria O’Donnell. What Is Propaganda, and How Does It Differ from Persuasion? Propaganda & Persuasion. SAGE Publications, 2018.
- Leef, George. “Beyond Ideology: Poetry and the Conservative Mind..” James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, June 11, 2017/.
- “Political Propaganda: Recognize It and Resist It” Civil Liberties Union for Europe, 27 Mar. 2023.
- “The Politics of Poetry.” Harvard Political Review, September 2, 2012.
- “Rhetorical Devices – Political Rhetoric.” Centre College Library, September 23, 2019.
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