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Public discourse

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Public discourse ‘Agony’ is now a word used to describe the emotions of football fans whose team has lost a cup final in extra time, or the physical discomfort associated with certain types of dental treatment. It used to mean the final stages of a difficult or painful death. Seamus O'Mahony, The Way We Die Now © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse America's least-trusted institutions — Congress, television news and big business, says Gallup — are remorselessly heard-from. The most trusted are the military (a closed box to most citizens) and small business (too poor to advertise at scale). … The feeling of your pain, the stakeholder-flattery: ingratiation has been the way of public and private elites during the exact era that trust in them has dropped. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, February 26, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse And the greatest phrase, I think, in the history of politics is on all of those red and white hats that I see out there: “Make America Great Again.” Donald Trump © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Are you just pissing and moaning, or can you verify what you're saying with data? Patron to guy next to him at the bar, in a September 6, 1999, New Yorker cartoon by Edward Koren © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Bing Bing Bong Bong Bing Bing Bing Donald Trump © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Blink twice if your not ok @marvinlee4887's advice to Katie Britt while watching her deliver the Republican's response to Biden's 2024 SOTU speech © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Bob Mueller brought a book to a Twitter fight. Ari Melber, May 30, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Comment is free but facts are on expenses. Tom Stoppard, Night and Day  © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Cowing people is not the same as converting them. Michelle Goldberg, New York Time, July 17, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Criticism seeks to engage in conversations and identify error; canceling seeks to stigmatize conversations and punish the errant. Criticism cares whether statements are true; canceling cares about their social effects. Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Crudity is appropriate in criticizing the crude. Aaron Poochigian,  introduction to Aristophanes: Four Plays, his translations of plays by Aristophones © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Demagogues need no longer stand erect for hours orating into a radio microphone. Tweet lies from a smartphone instead. David Frum, The Atlantic, March 2017 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Missile launch. Woosh. Boom.  Donald Trump, describing a missile launch © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The effectiveness of citizens’ assemblies  isn't surprising. Have you ever noticed how politicians grow a spine the moment they decide not to run for reelection? Well, a citizens' assembly is a bit like a legislature whose members make a pact barring them from seeking another term in office. The randomly selected members are not beholden to party machinations or outside interests; they are free to speak their mind and vote their conscience. What’s more, unlike elected bodies, these assemblies are chosen to mirror the population, a property that political theorists refer to as descriptive representation. For example, a typical citizens’ assembly has a roughly equal number of men and women … Ariel Procaccia, Scientific American, Nov. 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Even when a comment is so extreme that it does break into the mainstream, what happens next is predictable. The first time Trump says something, people react with shock and compare him to Hitler. The second time, people say Trump is at it again. By the third time, it becomes background noise — an appalling but familiar part of the Trump shtick. David A. Graham, The Atlantic, January/February 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Fear, cynicism, nihilism, and apathy coupled with disgust and disdain for democracy. This is the formula that modern autocrats, with some variations, sell to their citizens and to foreigners, all with the aim of destroying what they call “American hegemony.” Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic, June 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Following Trump's victory, an ancient Greek term suddenly suddenly re-entered English usage: demophobia – literally fear of the mob. What if conveys is cold feet about democracy. … The Trump era's changing vocabulary also includes a word of more recent coinage: oikophobia, literally an aversion to home surroundings. In reality, it means fear of your own people – the opposite of xenophobia. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Ford's “people efficiency actions” joins a long list of pusillanimous terminology intended to make you forget for just a moment, that these are working people whose lives will be upended. The list includes: • Downsizing • Eliminating • Rightsizing   redundancies • Smartsizing • Delayering • Reduction in • Workforce   force (RIF)   optimization • Headcount • Rebalancing   reduction   the level of • Adjusting to   human capital   shifts in demand • Offboarding • Force shaping withoutbullshit.com, May 17, 2017 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Four score and seven years ago – that's a long time ago, very long – our fathers, who spoke about this at great length, did what perhaps has virtually never been done before: brought forth on this continent, a new nation, a very great new nation – there's no question about that – conceived in liberty – and that is so important! – and dedicated to the amazing proposition – and they felt very strongly about this, I can tell you – that all men are created equal. Number one for me. Donald Trump's Gettysburg Address, imagined by Dana Milbank © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse God Emperor What American neo-Nazis call Donald Trump © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The higher the oratory, the riskier the magic. Edward Luce, Financial Times, January 4, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Humor … may be a way of telling us not to feel sorry for ourselves. But it is more often a way of telling us not to feel sorry for others. It creates an economy of compassion, limiting it to those who are laughing and excluding those who are being laughed at. It makes the polarization of humanity fun. … Trump is America's biggest comedian.  His badinage is hardly Wildean, but his put-  downs, honed to the sharpness of stilettos, are many people's idea of fun. For them, he makes anger, fear and resentment entertaining. Fintan O'Toole, NY Rev. of Books, Mar. 21, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I could tell you, If I wanted to, What makes me What I am. But I don't Really want to — And you don't Give a damn. “Impasse” by Langston Hughes © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I don't debate. There are too many debates. Too much Word, not enough Excel. Hans Rosling © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I don't really care much for hearing “both sides” or “opposing points of viiew,” so much as I care about understanding the literary tools deployed to advance those views — the discipline of voice, the use of verbs, the length and brevity of sentences, and the curiosity of the mind behind those sentences. It is this last that I find so often lacking. Great canons angle toward great power, and the great privilege of great power is an incuriosity about those who lack it. Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I don't want to give somebody my input and get their feedback. I'd be glad to offer my ideas and hear what he thinks of them. William Zinsser, On Writing Well © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I lived through the shift in Britain from cold politicians to please-like-me merchants with a studied knack for the demotic. Tell me, has it disarmed the public or increased their mistrust? Have attitudes to business softened or hardened since corporate PR became so vast in scale and simpering in style? In both realms, the best that can be ventured is that things would have been worse without the charm (how telling a word) offensive. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, February 26, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I thought it was demeaning to have to answer questions on serious issues in thirty seconds. Now I know you have to do it in a tweet. Adam Schiff © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse If you're explaining, you're losing. saying among politicians  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse If you're not in the Washington Post  every day, you might as well not exist. Newt Gingrich, who realized breaking norms outrageously gets you there  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Images of small men usually arise and persist widely only because big men find good use for them. C. Wright Mills, White Collar © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Impossible to rewrite. Rachel, do not try to rewrite art, okay? Do not. Lawrence O'Donnell to Rachel Maddow, The Last Word, September 21, 2021, commenting on a statement on the first page of Donald Trump's lawsuit against Mary Trump, the New York Times and three of its reporters for reporting on his history of tax abuse, which says: “the brazenness of the defendants' actions cannot be understated” © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse In my own sector, punditry, the man from a high-status country — above all, until now, the US or UK — is invited to explain the world. The man from a low-status country gets to explain his country. The woman from a low-status country is at best invited to explain the situation of women in her country.  Similar dynamics have played out over Ukraine. Traditionally, it was Russians or high-status westerners who got to interpret the country to the world. Even now, Ukrainian views risk being dismissed as partial or emotional. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, July 21, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse In the early 1990s, [Newt] Gingrich [then House Minority Whip] and his team distributed memos to Republican candidates instructing them to use certain negative words to describe Democrats, including pathetic, sick, bizarre, betray, antiflag, antifamily, and traitor . It was the beginning of a seismic shift in American politics. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse In the febrile, divisive state of our politics, it's not what you say, it's what you say about yourself by saying it that counts. David Runciman © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, “launder” became a dirty word. William Zinsser, On Writing Well © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse It's a good maxim that if you have a good dog you don't bark yourself. attributed to Clement Attlee © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse “It sounds like something I would say. That's how President Trump and I communicate, a lot of four-letter words, in this case three letters,” Mr Sondland quipped, adding that the phrase “loves your ass” was his way of conveying the situation in ”Trump-speak.“ Financial Times, November 22, 2019, on Sondland's response when asked if he had told Trump that Ukrainian President “Zelensky loves your ass,” as others had testified during the impeachment inquiry © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Lo and behold, the entity that becomes most persistent in alleging that Amerucan elections are fraudulent, faked, rigged and everything else, turns out to be the president of the United States [Donald Trump]. Renée DiResta, a leader of the Election Integrity Partnership, a team of scientists from various universities, think tanks and companies, that analyzes foreign and domestic anti-democratic disinformation campaigns © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The most effective form of persuasion is when you are not aware of being persuaded. Joseph Goebbels © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse One is in the impossible position of being unable to believe a word one's countrymen say. “I can't believe what you say,” the song goes, “because I see what you do” James Baldwin, “A Report from Occupied Territory” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms – he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discoure Political propaganda uses the language of virtuous ideals to unite people behind otherwise objectionable ends. Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse PR people, if you have something unpleasant to say, just say it. Hiding it behind euphemisms doesn't fool anyone. Today's case study: Ford's plan lay off 10% of its staff, which it calls a “people efficiency action.” withoutbullshit.com, May 17, 2017 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The pronouns “we” and “they” are the most important of all political words. They demarcate who's within the sphere of moral responsibiity, and who's not. Someone within that sphere who's needy is one of “us” – an extension of our family, friends, community, tribe – and deserving of help. But people outside that sphere are “them,” presumed undeserving unless proved otherwise. The central political question for any na- tion or group is where the borders of this sphere of mutual responsibility are drawn. Robert Reich, Christian Science Monitor, February 15, 2014 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley, “Words and Behaviour”  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The receptive ability of the masses is  very limited, and their understanding small; on the other hand, they have a great power of forgetting. This being so, all effectve propaganda must be confined to very few points which must be brought in the form of slogans. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Republicans? They're all claws, sharp teeth and fangs when they fight. The Democrats? Their weapon of choice  is adaptive coloration. “I'm a leaf. Don't eat me.” “Vote for me – I'm the same pattern as the couch.” Bill Maher, Real Time With Bill Maher, March 16, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Right or wrong, or even if I changed my mind about it or thought about it more, which I'm not saying I did, just place the thought out there that everyone's not thinking sometimes. Galileo, they wanted to chop his head off for saying that the earth was – what did he say? That the sun revolved around the earth, and vice versa. Kanye West, commenting on his claim that slavery was a choice  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse A series of lawsuits alleging that that the U.S. government sought to suppress conservative speech, including one launched by Missouri and Louisiana that has now reached the Supreme Court,  has effectively tried to silence organizations that investigate both domestic and foreign  disinformation campaigns, overt and covert. To state baldly what is happening:  the Republican Party's right wing is actively harassing legitimate, good-faith efforts to track the production and distribution of autocratic disinformation here in the United States. Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic, June 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Seventy percent of Democratic partisans and leaners said was never acceptable for elected officials to call their opponents stupid, while only 51 percent of Republicans same the same. Fifty-three percent of Democrats said it was never acceptable to call opponents “anti-American”; only 25 percent of Republicans same the same. And 42 percent of Democrats said is was never acceptable to call an opponent's policy positions “evil” — a minority this time, but, here again, a larger proportion than the 26 percent of Republicans who said the same. Osita Nwanevu, The New Republic, Oct. 2021, reporting on the findings of a 2019 poll by Pew Research Center © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Several excuses are always less convincing than one. Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s — and I own a big building there — it’s no —I shouldn't talk about this but that’s OK. I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it's the finest city in the world — sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, “What do you think you lost?” I said, “Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.” They say, “You think you’d do it again?” And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know.  Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson they say was the worst of  all, that he was treated worse than any other presi-. ident. I said, “Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.” I even got shot!  And who the hell knows where that came from, right? Donald Trump, Potterville MI, August 29, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument. Edward St Aubyn, Bad News  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse That was some weird shit. George W. Bush, commenting on Donald Trump's “carnage in America” inaugural address © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse There is a thin line between convincing people of the merits of a case and suggesting they are moral outcasts if they fail to see it. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, “M-Fer, I want more iced tea.” You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all. Bill O'Reilly, recounting his visit to Sylvia's, a famous restaurant in Harlem  © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discourse They say, “I'm going to protect you from the terrorists in Tehran and the homos in Hollywood.” We say, “We're for clean air, better schools, more health care.” James Carville, Democratic political consultant, comparing Republicans to Democrats © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse A thing is funny when – in some way that is not actually offensive or frightening – it upsets the established order. Every joke is a tiny revolution.  George Orwell, “Funny, but not Vulgar” © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public discourse  This is what the sociologist Howard Becker calls the “hierarchy of credibility”: Those at the top of the social hierarchy don't have to prove their claims; they're just taken for granted. But claims made by those on the bottom are burdened by skepticism and demands for proof. Eleni Schirmer and Louise Seamster, New York Times, May 26, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse To summarize, we need a modern-day kleroterion that can select a citizens' assembly that is representative in terms of multiple criteria — and can do so starting from an unrepresentative pool of volunteers. Thankfully, we've progressed from stone slabs to computers, so this problem boils down to the design of the right algorithm. … The problem of finding the fairest lottery of the potential assemblies … can be conquered by the right combination of optimization tools. Ariel Procaccia, Scientific American, November 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse  Tread very fucking lightly, because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me? Michael Cohen, to a reporter  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Troll culture became a way for fascism to hide in plain sight. Jason Wilson, The Guardian, May 23, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Trump reminded them [Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, who had suggested softening remarks about immigrants], the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he was at a rally, he then read aloud a few made up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, like rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country – as they did when he high- lighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies … Miller and Kushner laughed. Washington Post, May 24, 2018, on an Oval Office meeting © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Trump told one ally this week that he wanted “to brand” the informant [the FBI used in the early stages of its investigation of possible collusion with Russia by Trump's associates] a “spy,” believing the more nefarious term would resonate more in the media and with the public. NBC Miami, May 23, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse “Undercover,” “informant,” “confidential informant” – those are words I'm familiar with. I've never heard the term “spy” used. Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, commenting on Trump calling the informant used by the FBI in its investigation of reported connections between members of his campaign and Russian intelligence agents a “spy” they implanted in his campaign © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Use slides or videos to give people a break from looking at your face. But don’t fill the slides with large slabs of text. Your mouth is for words, and slides are for pictures. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, April 28, 2022, some advice to presenters at conferences © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse  We’re also going to place strong protections  to stop banks and regulators from trying to debank you from you — you know, your political beliefs what they do. They want to debank you, and we’re going to debank — think of this. They want to take away your rights, they want to take away your country, the things you’re doing. Donald Trump, at a New Hampshire rally in January, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse When it comes to critical race theory, think of it like Rihanna's pregnancy. Even if you think it has nothing to do with you, believe me, you're going to be hearing a lot about it this year. John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, February 20, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Wokeness is a problem and everybody knows it. It's hard to talk to anybody today —  and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn't say this. But they don't want to say it out loud. James Carville, April 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The words of a president matter. Even a lousy president. Joe Biden © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public discourse You always learn more from conversation than Gotcha!. Errol Morris © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. Mario Cuomo © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse You can’t get in trouble for what you don’t say. Mitch “The Taciturn” McConnell © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like “Latinx” that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like “communities of color.” I don't know anyone who speaks like that. I don't know anyone who lives in a “community of color.” I know lots of white and black and brown people and they all live in … neighborhoods. There's nothing inherently wrong with these phrases. But this is not how people talk. This is not how voters talk. And doing it anyway is a signal that you're talking one language and the people you want to vote for you are speaking another language. This stuff is harmless in one sense, but in another sense it's not. James Carville, April 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
 
Public discourse You have a great day, you're a piece of trash.  Jahan Wilcox, EPA spokesman, dismissing Elaina Plott, a reporter for The Atlantic, who asked about a top assistant to Scott Pruitt who resigned after being asked to do such things as looking into buying a used mattress for Pruitt from the Trump hotel in Washington, DC © 2018 Kwiple.com