Is Persuasion Dead?

In response to Matt Miller's June 4 New York Times editorial on the death of persuasion, I recently composed these brief and incomplete thoughts:

In two years of research, and teaching of three graduate seminars related to this subject, I've come up with a list of possible factors in the "death" of civil political conversation. I don't agree with all of them, but here they are:

1. Demoralization of disenfranchized groups: they no longer see the point in gentlemanly petitioning of the powers-that-be. Their interpretation of history tells them that dialogue achieves very little, and that confrontation and the threat of institutional destabilization achieves a great deal more.

2. Distrust of institutional means of political discussion. After Cointelpro, various black bag jobs, political assassinations and coups in other countries, etc., we have seen too many instances of institutional power resorting to "extra-persuasive" or "extra-discursive" means of crushing disagreement or alternative politics.

3. The guise of civility: As Robert Scott and Donald Smith wrote over 30 years ago, a rhetorical theory suitable to our age must account for the fact that civility and decorum often act as masks for the preservation of injustice. (I'm paraphrasing here, but their quote is virtually the same). Miller's call for more persuasive communication seems at best quaint and at worst blind to how standards of "politeness" seem to cover up systemic and ideological hegemony, and often great brutality. People blame journalists or activists for being "divisive" when they point out the corrupt, immoral, "divisive" actions of officials, etc.

4. The decline of "fairness doctrine"-based attempts to provide balance in the media. I'm NOT saying the Fairness Doctrine was a good idea (although this essay argues it was. But the decline of concern over genuine pluralist balance has been part and parcel of media consolodation.

5. The fact that ideas and conversations are basically contextualized by material relations, which means that in a world of growing antagonisms between and among social classes, nobody should be surprised that few people attempt to persuade others in different classes or perspectives.

6. Society's growing religious intolerance and the growth in popularity of totalistic religious dogma. When your religion has all the answers, it's difficult to accept other people's questions. When your religion has all the answers and eternity hangs in the balance, questioning those answers is, by definition, counterproductive, threatening, and destructive.

7. Brutal is as brutal does: Is it any surprise our young people (and even their parents) turn to violence as solutions to disagreements, etc., when (a) that's what our country does, and (b) that's what talk radio does, because it sells?

Just some ideas as to why "persuasion" is dying. I think the communication/rhetoric discipline has been slow to realize the way in which external and foundational factors contextualize and limit the utility of "pure persuasion," but I think those scholars who realize that we no longer live in Aristotle's world (if we ever did) will find some useful, if somewhat depressing things to say.