Symbolic Convergence Theory Paper

-4N EXPANSION OF THE RHETORICAL VISION COMPONENT
OF THE SYMBOLIC CONVERGENCE THEORY:
THE COLD WAR PARADIGM CASE
ERNEST G. BORMANN, JOHN F. CRAGAN,
AND DONALD C. SHIELDS
This study focuses on the ex ansion o the rhetorical vision component of Symbolic
ar rhetorical vision serves as a paradigm case
Convergence ilreory ( s c ~ . d e &hi
illustrating the emerging theoy of poup consciousness that is art of SCT. Though this
extended examph, we explain that, prior to their decline an terminus, three stream of
communication (consn'ousness creating, consciousness raisin and consciousness sustaining)
characterize the life cycle of a rhetorical vision. We al fo demonstrate thut rhetorical
visions exist along at Least four continua and that a number of distinct rhetorical
principles operate in the creation, development, maturity and decline of a rhetorical
vision.
1
INTRODUCTION
I
n 1990, the American media announced the end of the Cold War. With the
demolition of the wall dividing Germany into East and West and the decline of the
Communist party and governments in many countries in Eastern Europe, Arnericans shared the fantasy of victory in the Cold War. The subsequent dissolution of the
USSR into a federation of independent states, the adoption of a new constitution in
Russia, and the holding of democratic elections there further dramatized the end of
hostilities. The rhetorical end of the Cold War provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine the creation, rise, maturation, decline, and end of a major rhetorical
vision.
RESEARCH PROBLEM
This study expands the rhetorical vision component of Symbolic Convergence
Theory (SCT). We use the Cold War rhetorical vision as an illustration of the
emerging theory of group consciousness that is part of SCT (Bormann, 1985%
1985b; Cragan & Shields, 1992b, 1995). Over the years there have been several
criticisms of SCT and its suppositions. Bormann, Cragan, and Shields (1994) answer
the criticism and fully explain the presuppositions of the theory.
The Cold War rhetorical vision exhibited large scope, international importance,
and considerable duration. However, it is not our purpose to provide a complete.
rhetorical history of the Cold War. Rather, we present a survey of the leading
features of the rhetorical vision during the various Cold War presidential administrations. We base our analysis on previous SCT studies that contain detailed analyses
and specific conclusions about portions of the Cold War rhetorical vision. Our
examination of the Cold War is a paradigm case that explicates SCT's technical term
rhetorical virion.
COlctUUNICATION MONOGRAPHS, Volume 63, March 1996
u
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Through this extended example, we explain that, before their decline and
terminus, three streams of rhetorical consciousness characterize the life cycle of
rhetorical visions: consciousness creating, consciousness raising, and consciousness
sustaining. Then, we show that rhetorical visions exist along at least four different
continua, pure to mixed, secretive to proselytizing, inflexible to flexible, and
paranoid to healthy. As well, we identify the rhetorical principles that characterize
each stage in the creation, development, and decline of a rhetorical vision. We
compare the Cold War rhetorical vision with fantasy theme studies of similar
rhetorical communities to show SCl"s generalizability. In preparing this essay we surveyed and synthesized the results of 87 fantasy theme analysis studies that contributed to
the development of SCT. Over 20 of the 87 studies dealt with the rhetorical events during
the Cold War years. Only those studies that proved directly useful for this study appear in
our citations and references. There is a considerable body of literature providing rhetorical
criticism of the Cold War. Although previous scholars did not use SCT in their studies, we
refer to them when relevant Our emphasis, however, is upon studies using SCT.
THE COLD WAR RHETORICAL VISION AS PARADIGM CASE
The life of the Cold War rhetorical vision spanned the years 1947 to 1990. The
Cold War rhetorical vision imploded so suddenly that today it is difficult to
reconstruct the meaning, emotion, and motive for action that it provided for two
generations of Americans.
At the height of the Cold War rhetorical vision, most Americans believed that an
international communist conspiracy, with its master plot line to overthrow the free
world, provided the major obstacle to world peace. The scenario of the Cold War
presented a monolithic movement directed from within the walls of the Kremlin.
The vision depicted Communist conspirators' infiltrating, corrupting, and finally
overthrowing democratic institutions. The Cold War possessed elements of the
rhetorical visions of hot wars of the past. The fight was between the old elements of
Freedom versus Tyranny, but the world had never before faced a global struggle in
the presence of the atomic bomb. American foreign policy appeared frozen between
the major error of the last war and the fatal error of the next. The first was the drama
of appeasing the Communists after learning the lesson that appeasement leads to
war. The second was foreshadowed by the mushroom cloud and the reality of the
terrible destruction of nuclear war. We were in a war that we must not lose, but could
not win without sacrificing millions of humans to nuclear destruction. Thus, we
would fight the Cold War, not with guns and bombs, but with words and propaganda. The Cold War represented a struggle for the hearts and minds of people.
The cold war rhetorical vision emerged as three transitory rhetorical visions-One
World, Power Politics, and Red Fascism-at first competed and then partially fused,
in combination with aspects of WWII's "hot war" rhetoric, to explain the rapidly
changing events at the end of the war. These three visions vied for dominance from
the fall of 1945 to the spring of 1947. Coupled with reflections of the hot war rhetoric
of WWII, they provided the symbolic milieu that rhetoricians drew upon to forge
the Cold War rhetorical vision.
First Phase: Predominately Consciousness-Creating Communication
Consciousness-creating communication involves the sharing of fantasies to generate new symbolic ground for a community of people. Bormann (1990) reported
COLD WAR FANTASIES
3
many case studies of how small groups create a group consciousness. Kroll (1981)
discovered the way the various communities of Twin Cities women created a new
consciousness at the beginning of the women's movement. In this phase, speakers
dramatize new formulations, and others share them until group and community
fantasies explain the unfolding experience in novel ways. Because they are dynamic,
rhetoricians may embroider and modify the consciousness throughout the life of a
rhetorical vision. Thus, a certain amount of consciousness-creating communication
continues throughout the life cycle of a rhetorical vision.
Three rhetorical principles guide the creation of rhetorical visions: novelty,
explanatory power, and imitation. The principle of novelty asserts that, when established visions lag behind changing here-and-now conditions, they will often fail to
attract members of the second and third generations of those who inherit them. As
old visions lose their vitality, rhetoricians who use an innovative set of dramatizations will find fallow ground among substantial segments of the lukewarm inheritors
of the older visions. The hot war vision contained the time-bomb assuring its own
end. Here, it turned out to be an atomic time-bomb, and that proved vital for the
rhetoric of the postwar period. The period beginning August 1945 was novel
because Americans had to build from scratch a rhetorical vision that would explain
the United States' involvement in a post-WWII world.
The principle of explanatory power asserts that, when events become confusing and
disturbing, people are likely to share fantasies that provide them with a plausible and
satisfying account that makes sense out of experiences. Any new foreign policy
rhetorical vision that would attract many Americans needed to explain the behavior
of the Soviet Union, describe the impact of the atomic bomb, and identify America's
new role in the world.
The principle of imitation asserts that, with boredom or confusion, people begin to
share fantasies that give some old familiar dramas a new production. For example,
the attraction of the Restoration fantasy type stems, to some extent, from portraying
an ideal past with the old familiar heroes, values, and scenarios as a golden age to
which we should return. Visions cued by terms like new (New Deal, New Populism,
New Isolationism, New Feminism) or the prefix Neo (neoclassicism, neocolonialism,
neoimpressionism) illustrate the way creators of a new vision may use historical
personae and dramas as the bases for the creation of a new consciousness.
Fantasy type is the workhorse of rhetorical vision; it is also the driving force
behind the principle of imitation. Rhetoricians drew important fantasy types from
the hot war rhetorical vision, for example: (a) There are totalitarian forces that
conspire to conquer, dominate, and enslave the world; (b) Aggressor nations cannot
be appeased; (c)Just wars are battles of the upholders of freedom and dignity against
the forces of enslavement and domination; and (d) After the great war there will be
lasting peace based on world law.
Three major, if transitory, rhetorical visions emerged as the monolithic rhetoric of
the hot war gave way to postwar pressures. They proved to occupy only a brief
rhetorical space between the hot rhetoric of WWII that ended with VJ day in 1945
and the Cold War rhetorical vision that emerged in 1947. An understanding of the
three amorphous visions and their competing natures is important in explaining how
the consciousness of the Cold War, created in 1947, became an important force in
American rhetoric for more than 40 years. Cragan and Shields (1992b, 1995)
showed that the competitive symbolic interpretations of rhetorical communities
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caught up in specific visions reflect a master analogue or deep structure that tends to be
righteous, social, or pragmatic. A vision based on a righteous master analogue
emphasizes the right way of doing things. The Cold War rhetorical vision and the
transitory Red Fascism rhetorical vision were both based on righteous master
analogues. A vision with a social master analogue is linked to primary human
relations. The One World rhetorical vision is an example of a rhetorical vision based
on a social master analogue. A vision with a pragmatic master analogue emphasizes
expediency, practicality, utility, and whatever it takes to get the job done. Power
Politics is an example of this type of rhetorical vision.
One World. Cragan (1972) pointed to the inside cue of One WorUas the label for
one rhetorical vision evolving from the hot war rhetoric. Wendell Willkie (1943),
President of the Commonwealth and Southern utility, had used the phrase one wor,!~!
as the title for a best-selling book describing his efforts to sustain American relations
with the other allies and to establish a United Nations that would fulfill Woodrow
Wilson's grand dream of world law and world government. Many shared the
fantasies of one world and the formation of the United Nations got under way in
1944 at Dumbarton Oaks even before hostilities ceased.
The One World rhetorical vision portrayed the victorious allies as working
together in times of peace as they had in times of war. Together, the allies would
establish a world government and the machinery to deal with international disputes.
Together, they would arrive at equitable treaties of peace with the Axis powers.
Together, they would help with the rehabilitation of the destruction caused by the
war. The Russian people had proved to be tough, courageous, and good allies. Many
Americans shared a fantasy in the euphoria following victory when President Harry
Truman had calledJoseph Stalin "Uncle Joe."
The horror of atomic warfare provided the ultimate justification of the rhetoric of
One World. For the people who participated in the vision, the final questions were
always, how can we avoid an atomic holocaust? How can the earth survive another
world war? The mushroom cloud dominated the fatal horizon. Humankind had
gained the power to commit mass suicide. The atomic bomb meant that world
government was the only hope for humanity.
Many speakers dramatized the atomic bomb as a major event that sanctioned the
One World vision. Former Senator and Secretary of State, James Byrnes (1946)
described "the coming of the atomic bomb [as] only the last of a series of warnings to
mankind" (p. 242). President Truman (1946) declaimed that "all mankind now
stands in the doorway to destruction. One solution, only one solution remains, the
substitution of decency and reason and brotherhood for the use of force in the
government of man" (p. 333). Palmer Hoyt (1945), publisher of the Portland
Oregonian, cautioned that "man had taken the second bite from the apple of
knowledge and the taste was bitter-sweet on his tongue. It was obvious now that the
talk of a third world war was equivalent to discussion of race suicide. . . . It must now
be the one world of Wendell Willkie or no world of the evil one" (p. GO).
However, the One World vision failed to account plausibly for the behavior of the
Soviets after WWII. When the first meetings of the United Nations did not produce a
workable government and when international events seemed to pose a growing
crisis, some rhetoricians began to speak out for a return to Power Politics and
diplomacy as a way to meet the situation.
COLD WAR FANTASIES
Power Politics. The rhetoricians of Power Politics took the same here-and-now
phenomena portrayed in the One World vision, but they made sense of them in
ways that wove a different symbolic reality. The superior knowledge and intellect of
the foreign policy specialists, along with the "informed" elite cadres in American
society, sanctioned the Power Politics rhetorical vision. The drama depicted a world
of competing nation states that worked in terms of their own self-interest. Participants in the transitory Power Politics rhetorical vision saw the post W I I scene as a
rivalry between the remaining powers-the USSR and the USA-who would move to
expand their spheres of influence. For the participants in the Power Politics vision,
wise, mature diplomacy-rather than world government or another ideological
crusade (war)-provided the way to avoid war and the horrors of atomic holocaust.
Columnist Walter Lippmann (1948), a leading rhetorician for Power Politics, put it
this way: "If only our people would abjure their illusions about the nature of the
world in which they have so recently become a leading power and would permit and
assist those who wanted to form a policy, we can survive" (p. 244).
Despite the One World rhetoric blaming power blocs for past wars, the advocates
of pragmatism believed that Power Politics provided the best alternative considering
the harsh realities of postwar foreign policy: "If we will not use the classic procedures
of diplomacy, which is always a combination of power and compromise-then the
best we can look forward to is an era of disintegration in the civilized world followed
by a war that once it begins will be savage and universal and indecisive" (Lippmann,
1948, p. 244).
The Power Politics vision contained as the central heroic figure a rational,
cool-thinking political analyst who carefully assessed each critical variable. The
villain was a personification ofJohn Q. Public as naive, emotional, and uninformed.
Raymond McKelvey (1945), a professor of political science, likened the American
public to an innocent maiden plucking petals from a daisy murmuring: "He loves
me, he loves me not. She is tossed into ecstasy or thrown into despair depending on
the outcome of her petal count" (p. 112). George Kennan (1967), a Truman
Administration State Department official, observed that, at the time, "Americans
had the tendency to divide the world neatly into Communist and free-world
components" (p. 322). Lippmann (1948) said that it was the power politician's task to
find some middle ground between the two emotional states of the American people:
"We find an overwhelming disposition to regard the choices before us not as relative
but as absolute . . . either total peace or total war . . . either nonintervention or a
crusade . .. either isolationism or globalism" (p. 244).
The euphoria following the end of the hot war was brief. Shortly before the war
ended, Franklin Roosevelt died; shortly after, the British deposed Winston Churchill
from power. The allies began to squabble among themselves. They failed to draft a
suitable treaty of peace for Europe. The Soviet government assured that the
communist parties in the Balkans and in Poland and East Germany came to power.
The regime of Tito in Yugoslavia provided one of the few exceptions to the rise of
Soviet control, but even Tito espoused communism.
Crisis followed crisis. The Soviets blocked action by the Security Council of the
United Nations by the veto, and American efforts to dislodge communist power
from the emerging Eastern Bloc on the Soviet borders proved ineffective. The
prewar anticommunist rhetorical vision in the United States had been damped down
by the force of the hot war rhetoric during the alliance of the USSR and the USA.
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Now, as Cragan (1972, 1981) discovered, there arose a new sharing of the old red
scare dramas with a twist. In the new version, the form of the hot war rhetoric
remained, but familiar, postwar figures replaced the key personae. Stalin replaced
Hitler, the Soviet Union replaced Germany, and Communism replaced Nazism as
the leading symbols for the enemy. The Power Politics vision was soon challenged
by a competing, transiton vision called red fascism.
Red Fascism. The rhetorical vision of Red Fascism portrayed a monumental
struggle between good and evil. Participants in the vision characterized the evil as
international, monolithic, godless communism and the forces of good as democratic
freedom. Everett Dirksen (1947), speaking before the House of Representatives,
asserted: "The greatest menacing force to freedom in the world today is red fascism.
That is just another term for Communism, but I think it is a little more impressive
and accurate when you call it 'red fascism' " (p. 359). An analogy between Germany
and the USSR provided frightened Americans with a way to make sense out of the
breaking news and the growing tensions in the world. The analogy suggested that
wise Americans would take the lessons of the 1930s to heart and not make the same
mistakes in dealing with the Communists that they had made in dealing with the
Nazis.
The central fantasy type of the new vision portrayed a "loyal, patriotic American"
(Hoover, 1946, p. 10) as one who was "willing to stand up and be counted" (Hoover,
1947, p. 24). The villain, an unscrupulous terrorist, sought to subjugate the world.
Fascists would pose as peace loving. They would form united fronts with fellow
travelers. They would say or promise anything to move toward revolution against
capitalism and their ultimate goal of world communism. When their pacts and
promises no longer functioned for their purposes, they would break agreements and
go back on their word without qualms.
The mushroom cloud, the dominant fixture of the scene, thwarted the Red
Fascists to some extent. America, alone, possessed the atomic bomb. Some American extremists counseled that we drop the bomb on the USSR and destroy the
communist menace. On the other hand, the central fantasy type portrayed the
honorable Americans as unwilling to start an aggressive war. While the threat of
nuclear destruction hung over another world war, the efforts of the villains would be
limited to encouraging famine, exploiting economic catastrophes, encouraging mass
strikes, sabotage, and boring from within.
William Chamberlin (1947) noted that "the greatest danger to our American
heritage of liberty comes not from without but within. It comes not from open frontal
assault but from a process of sapping and undermining" (p. 174).J. Edgar Hoover
(1946), Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said: "The divide and
conquer tactics did not die with Hitler. They are being employed with great skill
today by American communists with their 'boring from within strategy' " (p. 10).
The red fascists' effectiveness emanated from their ability to dupe many liberal
elements of the society into supporting them. As early as 1948, Senator Karl Mundt
(1948),speaking for the anticommunist, Mundt-Nixon bill, made an accusation in a
speech in Chicago that was typical of the Red Fascist rhetoric when he said: "It was
not a pleasant thing when the FBI said, 'you have over 200 communists in the State
Department, Mr. President, who got in under the authority of your predecessor in
office' " (p. 556).
The participants in the vision felt that war with the USSR, the center of the
COLD WAR FANTASIES
communist movement, was inevitable, but that it would not occur for ten or fifteen
more years. Meanwhile, two themes began to coalesce. America must stop appeasing the communists on the international scene and halt their infiltration in internal
affairs to refurbish American freedom at home.
'
Tlie Emergence of the Cold War Rhetorical Vision. During 1946, the year after war
ended, large numbers of the American public seemed confused and unsure in the
vacuum left by the end of the hot war rhetorical vision. Meanwhile, the dramatic
unfolding of events kept outracing the explanatory power of the available rhetoric.
On February 9, 1946, in an important public address, Stalin (1946) made clear his
belief in the incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He declared that the
capitalist system rendered war inevitable and that Soviet domestic production "must
wait on rearmament" (p. 486). Winston Churchill, vacationing in Florida, upon
hearing Stalin's speech, flew to Washington to confer with President Truman. Their
discussion concerned what Churchill should say in his upcoming speech at Westminster College in Fulton, MO (McCullough, 1992, p. 487). On March 5, at Westminster
College, Churchill delivered his speech, "The Sinews of Peace," that became known
as the "Iron Curtain" speech. In that speech, Churchill (1971) stated:
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the
Continent Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient States of Central and Eastern Europe.
Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities
and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one
form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing
measure of control from Moscow. . . . (p. 548)
Stalin responded to his former WWII ally's speech by suggesting it was "a call to
war" (McCullough, 1992, p. 490).
Two weeks before Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, George Kennan, then the
United States' charge d'affaires in Moscow, sent his famous, 8,000 word, "Long
Telegram" assessing the Soviet's foreign policy intentions. The State Department
distributed the telegram by mimeograph to President Truman and the Administration's policy makers and speech writers (McCullough, 1992, p. 491). Kennan
published it a year later with the title, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," under the
pseudonym, "X" (1947).
Kennan or "X" (1947) felt that Marxist ideology motivated the government in
Moscow: "Ideology, as we have seen, taught them that the outside world was hostile
and that it was their duty eventually to overthrow the political forces beyond their
borders" (p. 569). Kennan also characterized the satellite communist parties of
Eastern Europe through the fantasy theme: "Like the white dogs before the
phonograph, they hear only the 'master's voice' " (p. 574). Kennan then described
what was to become a ! *yfantasy of the Cold War rhetorical vision. He portrayed
Soviet "political actionl'.as: "A fluid stream which moves constantly, wherever it is
allowed to move. Its main concern is to make sure that it has filled every nook and
cranny available to it in the basin of world power" (p. 575). (Had Kennan said "a
'red' fluid stream," his fantasy theme would have matched the world maps in Time
["Russia," April 1, 1946, p. 271 magazine: Russia appeared as solid red and the
occupied and endangered countries appeared in lighter shades of red.)
Kennan felt that the United States should build a levy to contain the Soviet, fluid
stream: "The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union
must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russia's
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expansive tendencies" (p. 575). For Kennan, American foreign policy must provide
"firm containment designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce
at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful
and stable world'? (p. 58 1).Kennan concluded that if we could contain the expansionist Soviet ideology, the Soviet system would collapse upon itself within 50 years.
The State-War-NavyCoordination Committee (SWNCC), a subcommittee of the
State Department's Office of Public AfFairs, produced a 100,000-wordworking paper
on the Soviet Union and American foreign policy. The paper played a major role in
the development of the Cold War rhetorical vision (Clifford & Holbrooke, 1991;
Jones, 1955; McCullough, 1992). Issued in September of 1946 and heavily influenced by Kennan's Long Telegram (February, 1946),Jones (1955) labeled the
SWNCC paper as "the most significant document used in the drafting of the Truman
Doctrine" (p. 152). Clifford and Holbrooke (1991) agreed. The paper concluded,
"We should couch it [containment] in terms of a new policy of this government to gs~
to the assistance of free governments everywhere. .. . The only way we can sell the
public on our new policy is by emphasizing the necessity of holding the line:
communism versus democracy should be the major theme" Uones, 1955, p. 151).
McCullough (1992) reported the key world events identified in the SWNCC
paper as the justification for promulgating the new rhetorical vision. These events
included the USSR's domination of Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Romania, and Bulgaria; the supplying of Communist forces in China; the denial of
unification of Korea; and programs for the development of atomic weapons, guided
missiles, agents for chemical warfare, a strategic air force, and submarines of great
cruising range.
On March 12, 1947, President Truman addressed a joint session of Congress and,
by radio, the ~ m e r i c a npeople. Examination of the Truman Doctrine Speech, "On
Aid to Greece and Turkey," revealed that the Administration selected the major
fantasy themes from Red Fascism (e.g., communism versus democracy), Power
Politics (e.g., containment strategy), and the Hot War vision (e.g., make the world
safe for democracy) as the best available means of persuasion. Jones (1955) argued
that the stakes were high and concluded that if the Truman Doctrine had not been
accepted, then Congress would never have passed the Marshall Plan.
The Marshall Plan, drafted by speech writer Charles Bohlen from another report
by Kennan (this time on economic recovery in Europe), bore the name of General
George C. Marshall, the Secretary of State, who spoke during Commencement at
Harvard on June 5, 1947, on the subject of "European Unity." In that speech,
Marshall called for massive, economic aid to rebuild Europe to prevent economic
collapse that could lead to revolution. Although such aid could prevent the economic collapse of Europe and forestall possible communist revolutions and takeovers, historians disagree as to the Cold War intent of the Marshall Plan itself.
President Truman described the Truman Doctrine speech and the Marshall Plan
speech as "two halves of the same walnut" Oones, 1955, p. 233).
In crafting the most famous Cold War rhetorical vision speech, The Truman
Doctrine, the Administration's speech writers did not yet have the symbolic cue,
"Cold War," available to them. They soon participated in its creation by stitching
the new vision together from the surrounding symbolic material. The speech writers
intentionally employed imitative fantasy themes calculated as acceptable to the
American people. One theme emphasized the bipolar world of Red Fascism that
COLD WAR FANTASIES
depicted a world divided into democratic free peoples and Communist enslaved
peoples. In the speech, President Truman (1947) stated:
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions,
representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and
religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It
relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression
of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting
attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. (p. 2)
4
!
1
I
With the speech, Truman postponed the vision of One World of law and rule
embodied by the operation of the United Nations: "The United Nations is designed
to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not
realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to
maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose totalitarian regimes" (p. 2).
George Kennan's Power Politics fantasy of containing communism provided the
justification for aid to Greece and Turkey. Truman put it this way: "The disappearance of Greece as an independent state would have a profound effect upon those
countries in Europe whose people are struggling against great difficulties to maintain
their freedoms and their independence while they repair the damages of war" (p. 2).
As well, following the principle of imitation, the speech writers returned to the hot
war rhetoric to reassure the American people of the familiarity of the new vision:
"One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the
creation of conditions . . . to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a
fundamental issue in the war with Germany andJapan" (p. 2).
In summary, the Truman Doctrine and the Kennan "X" article, or Long Telegram, two important rhetorical artifacts, illuminated how the communication specialists created dramatizations that accounted for the USSR's foreign policy initiatives.
The rhetorical and foreign policy decisions of the Truman Administration provided
the Red Fascism drama with a vast, new international scene. A new foreign policy
rhetoric was born. The United States and the Soviet Union became locked in the
grip of a Cold War. The war's guiding parameters included the containment rhetoric
of Power Politics and the One World terror of atomic holocaust.
The atomic bomb assured that this war could not be fought as had the last. A hot
war was inconceivable, for it might result in a chain reaction that could destroy the
entire earth. Because a hot war was impossible, this war must be fought, not with
bullets to force victory, but with words to sway the hearts and minds of people. It was
a war of persuasion and propaganda. It would often be fought by underground
forces, covert actions, and fifth columns. Such a war would be as amoral and
destructive as the old hot wars, but it must never escalate into an atomic war. To
prevent atomic war, the Power Politics fantasy type of deterrence provided a
solution. Dangerous as it might be, the war must be fought by means of mutual
deterrence. Move must be met by countermove. Espionage matched with espionage. A buildup of atomic forces balanced with a counter buildup. A buildup of
conventional forces answered by a counter buildup.
The consciousness-creatingphase of the Cold War rhetorical vision took place in
the vacuum left by the end of WWII. The Hot War rhetorical vision became an
10
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anachronism with victory. But those elements of the Hot War vision relating to the
Allies' cooperating to create a new world order and a viable United Nations also
failed to account for the postwar scene. As the international situation deteriorated,
none of the remaining rhetorical fragments of One World, Power Politics, or Red
Fascism rhetorical visions could gain appreciable sharing and support. In response
to a growing feeling of crisis, a series of important rhetorical events, including some
by such world leaders as Truman and Churchill, attempted to cope with the
situation. They selected key fantasies from the three bodies of rhetoric on the scene
and, stitching them together with new dramas designed to explain what was
happening, created a new consciousness. The new formulations provided a basis for
action to deal with the troublesome aftermath of the war. With the Truman Doctrine
speech, these emerging fantasies were snapped into a coherent overall rhetorical
vision based on an analogy of the present situation's being like a war. However,
because of the atomic bomb, this must be a cold war. The novelty of the analogy and
the aptness with which it provided coherence was striking to many. The formulation
of the Cold War rhetorical vision was quickly shared by elements of the media and
by growing numbers of the public. The Cold War fantasies made such good sense.
Now it seemed, for those who shared them, that the world was understandable and
the situation clearly dire. But the new rhetorical vision also supplied answers to
questions about what should be done. The new ability to explain-enforced by the
novelty of the analogy but also made familiar by the fantasy types drawn from One
World, Power Politics, and Red Fascism-enticed many to share the fantasies of the
new rhetorical vision.
Second Phase: Predominately Consciousness-Ratjikg Communication
Consciousness-raising communication is the proselytizing that leads inquirers and
newcomers to share the fantasies of a rhetorical vision in such a way that they
become converts and members of the rhetorical community. Consciousness-raising
communication tends to be a feature of the communication once the new vision
emerges and some consciousness raising goes on for the rest of the life cycle. At
times, however, the dominant communication preoccupation of the community is
consciousness raising. Cor.sciousness-raising phases tend to come in the early period
of a rhetorical vision although there may be periodic outbreaks of consciousness
raising throughout the life of the rhetorical community. (With religious rhetorical
visions, we refer to these outbreaks as "revivals.")
The principle of critical mars is central to consciousness raising. This principle
asserts that, just as a nuclear chain reaction takes place when a certain size of
fissionable material begins to chain, so also does a rhetorical vision begin a period of
rapid growth only when it reaches a critical mass. Why does a vision reach critical
mass? Most, if not all, of the following factors can play a role: (a) The here-and-now
situation is such that many potential converts find the new fantasies do a good job of
making sense out of a confusing time of troubles; (b)The individual psychodynamics
of many people, their personal problems, coincide so they have a common predisposition to share the kinds of fantasies that characterize the vision; (c) The vision
attracts some able rhetoricians who have the requisite artistry to develop dramatizing messages in ways that make them compelling and attractive; (d) The vision has
administrative and rhetorical staff with the means and tenacity to keep propagating
the vision; (e) The propagandists for the vision have access to sufficient mecms of
COLD WAR FANTASIES
communication and sufficient channels to reach many people. In the Cold War
rhetorical vision, the Truman Administration created it in such a short time and it
chained out among the American people at such a rapid rate that it, indeed, was like
a nuclear chain reaction.
Cold War fantasy themes chained out immediately after the Truman Doctrine
speech. Newspaper and magazine commentators quickly shared the drama of a
declaration of war. Harrison Smith (1947),in an editorial entitled, "The Die is Cast,"
noted: "Our President has thrown down the gauge of battle, our hat is in the ring,
and there must be no other end to it but success" (p. 22). The New York Times
("Extracts," March 13, 1947, p. 4) reported editorial comments from around the
country, including The Chicago Tribune'sstatement: "Mr. Truman made as cold a war
speech against Russia as any President has ever made except on the occasion of
going before Congress to ask for the declaration of war." The New York Times also
reported comment from 27ze St. Louk Post Drjpatch: "The President's address has
committed the nation to an all-out diplomatic action just as a declaration of shooting
war must necessarily follow when the President asks for it" ("Extracts," p. 4). The
caption for James Reston's (1947, March 13) editorial read, "Truman's Speech
likened to 1823 and 1941 Warnings" (p. 3) that referenced the Monroe Doctrine and
the Lend-Lease program. Harold Callender's article (1947, March 13) on the
European reaction to the Truman speech contained the following subheadings:
"Diplomats in Paris declare 'new Monroe doctrine' must force Soviet showdown"
(p. 3) and "Plan would have halted Hitler" (p. 3).
The key words cold war first appeared in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature in
May of 1947. Cold War scenarios dominated the post-1947, foreign policy rhetoric
of the United States. By the late 1940s, polls showed that most Americans had shared
the Cold War rhetorical vision and saw the communists as the villains. For example,
the American Institute of Public Opinion (1949b, p. 36 1) found that 72% of a sample
of Americans believed the Soviet Union did not want peace. In another sample
(1948, p. 359), 73% thought the USSR would start a war to get what it wanted. In a
later sample (1950, p. 192),70% felt the USSR wanted to dominate the world.
Rhetorical visions tend to possess a prominent fantasy type that gives adherents
the motivation to seek to raise the consciousness of potential new members. This
fantasy type falls somewhere on a continuum from celebrating secrecy and mystery
on one end to glorifying the spreading of the word on the other. The fantasy type
(Chesebro, Cragan & McCullough, 1973) contains the motive to strive to raise the
consciousness of inquirers, outsiders, nonbelievers, and the uninformed until they
share the new consciousness.
The Cold War rhetorical vision contained a powerful proselytizing fantasy that
portrayed the Cold War as fought for the hearts and minds of people. The weapons
were to be persuasion and propaganda coupled with economic and military aid. The
United States remained a model of liberty for the world to follow. Yet, being a model
was not enough. The United States must win the good will of the uncommitted and
preserve its prestige and credibility around the world. To that end, the United States
must strive to gain allies, supporters, and territory for freedom. Driven by the
proselytizing fantasy's motive, a new phase of the rhetoric emerged that was
dominated by consciousness-raisingcommunication.
The principle ofdedication (Bormann, 1969; Shields & Cragan, 1981, pp. 18 1-1 9 1)
asserts that, when planned events inspire people to act in accord with the key
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emotions present in the rhetoric of a vision, their consciousness is raised. Members
of rhetorical communities often plan their consciousness raising efforts so that they
end with the new converts' taking some action that publicly testifies to their
conversion. A series of radical revolutionary consciousness-raising sessions (Chesbro, Cragan & McCullough, 1973) ended with the members' taking direct action,
such as leafletting or demonstrating on behalf of their new rhetorical vision. The
rhetoricians of the Cold War rhetorical vision sought to raise consciousness through
a series of planned "freedom crusades" to proselytize new converts to the vision.
Central to a crusade, whether religious or political, is the opportunity for new
converts to activelyjoin in the drama.
The first crusade for freedom to travel in the United States represented an effort to
raise America's faith in the hero of the Cold War drama. In May of 1947, the
Truman Administration started the "Zeal for American Democracy" program that
featured the Freedom Train. The Freedom Train was a Paul Revere to sound the
alarm and create an upsurge of patriotism. The train traveled to more than 200
American cities and displayed such documents as the Declaration of Independence,
the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Truman Doctrine. Thousands of Americans turned out to examine the sacred documents. School children
sent away for replicas of the great Freedom Train and its parchment.
O n Labor Day, 1949, Eisenhower formally launched another Crusade for Freedom to raise funds for Radio Free Europe. For this crusade of words, organizers built
a 10-ton freedom bell, standing 8 feet high, to carry the inscription: "That this world
under God shall have a new birth of freedom." Eisenhower's Crusade for Freedom
Committee placed the bell on a flatbed trailer truck and brought it from town to
town as the main attraction of their rallies. More than 16 million Americans signed
the Freedom Scroll, and the crusade produced $1.3 million in the first year to
support Radio Free Europe. Eisenhower (1950) indicated the crusade's purpose: "To
fight the big lie with the big truth" (p. 746). He noted the program had been "hailed
by President Truman . . . as an essential step in getting the case of freedom heard by
the world's multitudes" (p. 747).
After the early rapid growth of the rhetorical community, some Cold Warriors
began losing their zeal, and the vision no longer seemed as exciting as it had. Here,
one can discern a new phase of the Cold War rhetoric emerging-a phase dominated
by consciousness-sustaining communication.
Third Phase: Predominately Consciousness-Sustaining Communication
The consciousness-sustaining phase of the Cold War rhetorical vision predominated from 1950 to 1965. During this time, the Cold War rhetorical vision provided
the dominant frame for interpreting world events. Within this period four presidential elections occurred. Dwight Eisenhower defeated the democratic candidate,
Adlai Stevenson, in 1952 and again in 1956.John Kennedy narrowly defeated the
republican candidate, Richard Nixon, in 1960. President Lyndon Johnson defeated
the republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, in 1964. During and between these
elections, no major political candidate departed from the text of the Cold War
rhetorical vision. The only question asked of the candidates was how cold a Cold
Warrior were they? The following section describes some efforts undertaken to
sustain the Cold War rhetorical vision during this 15-year period.
Consciousness-sustaining communication is aimbd at keeping those who have
COLD WAR FANTASIES
13
shared the rhetorical vision committed (Bormann, 1983; Shields, 1974, 1981b). In
the stage of maturity, most of those who were susceptible to conversion had been
converted, and some of those who previously shared the vision begin to lose the
faith. The rhetoricians now face a major communication challenge. They need to
pump new life into the rhetorical vision. This model for rhetorical visions, derived
from previous studies, also holds for the Cold War rhetorical vision. We have
already documented the stage of explosive growth for the Cold War. Here we come
to the period of the plateau. That period of maturity ends in the mid 1960s, with the
rise of the anti-war movement and the counterculture.
Rhetorical visions may be placed on a flexible to inflexible continuum (Bormann,
1978). On one end are flexible rhetorical visions that are sensitive to the breaking
news and the changing experience of the participants in the vision. Participants in
flexible visions often reshuffle their symbolic fantasies so that they have a shifting
pantheon of characters, plot lines, scenes, and sanctioning agents. Depending on
events, they may change their values and motives, and the vision is often amorphous
because of the rapidly changing circumstances. At the opposite end of the continuum are inflexible rhetorical visions that maintain their internal integrity despite
changing circumstances and experiences. The inflexible visions remain impervious
to argument and consciousness creating efforts to change their nature.
The rhetoricians involved in consciousness-sustaining communication in inflexible rhetorical visions often seek one of three overriding goals. First, they may use a
communication strategy aimed at restoration (Bormann, 1982a), in which case the
effort is to reclaim lost rhetorical ground and return to the essential position of the
founders of the rhetorical vision. Second, they may select a communication strategy
aimed at consemation (Stoltz, 1986),in which case the effort is to keep what remains of
the vision and integrate changing positions into it without diluting it so much that
they lose important values, emotions, and motives. Third, they may rely on a
communication strategy aimed at presemation (Stoltz, 1986),in which case the effort is
to keep the rhetorical vision pure and unchanging.
The inflexible visions tend to fall out of step with experience. They are in danger
of becoming first conservative and then reactionary. Participants in inflexible visions
do live in a symbolic world of certainty. They have the feeling of a firm symbolic
foundation under foot and an assurance that their rhetorical vision accounts for
experience although this sense-making may often depart from the evidence of
experience. Inflexible rhetorical visions have a righteous cast. The participants in an
inflexible vision seek not to adapt to the world as it is, but to bring it up to the right
standards. Although there have been some fantasy theme studies of noteworthy
inflexible rhetorical visions in the history of American public address (Bormann,
1985b),few surpass the Cold War rhetoric in rigidity.
The principle of shiefdingasserts that inflexible, righteous visions often remain pure
and unchanged by containing motives to block counter messages in the formal and
informal channels of communication. At this point in the Cold War, the rhetoricians
adopted the strategy of preservation. To question the Cold War effort was traitorous.
In the Cold War rhetorical vision, the fantasy type cued by the phrase "bipartisan
foreign policy" embodied the motives for censorship of the formal channels of
communication.
Early in the life of the Cold War rhetorical vision, the participants faced the
problem of open communication in the Congress of the United States. During the
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'
hot war, a bipartisan foreign policy had developed to keep plans secret from
the enemy, but in the immediate postwar years, foreign policy debate again became
the order of the day. Vision adherents argued that to meet the totalitarian threat it
was necessary to act with similar secrecy and dispatch just as in WWII when military
plans were kept secret. Such dramatizations became widely shared in the Interests of
National Security fantasy type.
The motives embedded in the Interests of National Security fantasy resulted in
efforts to curtail public debate of foreign policy. The Congress, including the loyal
opposition, agreed to renew the hot war tactic of acting through a bipartisan foreign
policy. That policy worked to clog the formal channels of communication regarding
open foreign policy debate. Secrecy in foreign policy became an official way of life.
Concurrently, motives to block counter messages in the informal channels
resulted in the surfacing of a Censorship of UnAmerican Activities fantasy type. The
Conspiracy fantasy type has long been popular in American history (Cragan, 1975).
The anticommunist version of the old recumng form of the Conspiracy fantasy type
began in 1946 to portray the communists as the conspirators and to provide the
motives for the blocking of counter messages in the informal channels of communication. As the rhetorical vision of the Cold War chained out in American society, the
motive to cut out the cancer of communism soon produced dramatic action. John
Foster Dulles (1948) proclaimed: "Peace requires that the free societies be so healthy
that they will repel communist penetration just as a healthy body repels malignant
germs. That is the only way to prevent communist dictatorships from so spreading
that they will isolate us and eventually strangle us" (p. 272). Republican Senator
Styles Bridges (1948) operationalized Dulles's fanasy theme with the practical
suggestion that we should "register all communists in the United States. The
American people have a right to know who among their number are disloyal to their
country" (p. 393).
President Truman had the Loyalty Board, theJustice Department, and the FBI out
looking for, and sometimes finding, members of the conspiracy. The Congress soon
started the House UnAmerican Activities Committee to examine political, economic, and social groups in search of the subversive villain. The Public Opinion
Quarterly ("American Institute," 1949%p. 165) reported a poll showing that 94% of
college-educated Americans had heard of the UnAmerican Activities Committee
and only 22% favored stopping its investigations. Many private firms were also
establishing their "uno5cial" loyalty programs.
In 1949, the United States suffered perhaps its greatest defeat in the Cold War.
The Chinese Communists succeeded in forcing the remaining troops associated with
Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists from the mainland of China to the island of Formosa.
A major land mass with much of the world's population had fallen to the Communists. In 1950, the North Korean Communists attacked across the Yalu river into
South Korea. The Cold War rhetorical vision provided a clear goal, containment,
and motive to act. Under the leadership of the United States, the United Nations sent
troops into South Korea to stem the red tide. This "police action" did not go well.
Clearly by 1950, the Cold War was going badly. To those who shared the Cold War
rhetorical vision, the forces of Communism were on the march.
Inflexible rhetorical visions often contain paranoid fantasy types. For zealous
rhetorical visions, the paranoid fantasy often turns out to be that of conspiracy.
Conspirators are hard to track down. One rhetorical strategy for dealing with
COLD WAR FANTASIES
conspirators is to root them out and keep them from using communication to do
their dirty work. When members sharing an inflexible rhetorical vision begin to
share a Conspiracy fantasy type, the principle of shielding tends to come into play.
Rhetorical visions can range on a continuum from paranoid to healthy. In the 1950s,
the Cold War rhetorical vision sanctioned what now appear as deranged and
paranoid fantasy types with their motives for outrageous behavior.
By 1951, SenatorJoseph McCarthy was identifying the Conspirator Communist.
His dramas were not different from those of the past. He succeeded in gaining more
widespread sharing because the time was propitious, his rhetoric was more striking
and extreme than that of others' retelling the same narratives, and he had access to
the formal channels of communication.
In his infamous speech to the Senate onJune 14, 1951, Senator McCarthy accused
General George C. Marshall of being the arch-conspirator of the Truman Adrninistration. In his 60,000 word speech, McCarthy (1951) asked:
How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this Government
are consorting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a gTeat conspiracy, a
conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A
conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever
deserving of the maledictions of all honest men. (p. 6602)
The net results of the rhetorical tactics involving loyalty oaths, black listing,
investigating committee meetings (often broadcast to the public), and loyalty programs in the private sector were a substantial censorship, within the informal
channels of communication, of the counter-rhetoric attacking the basic fantasies of
the Cold War rhetorical vision.Justice William 0.Douglas (1952), as one who did
not share the Cold War rhetoric, noted in a New York Times Magazine article, "The
Black Silence of Fear," that "there is an ominous trend in this nation. We are
developing tolerance only for the orthodox point of view on world affairs . . ." (p. 7).
Douglas wrote that the traveler returning to America from a trip would find "that
thought is being standardized, that the permissible area for calm discussion is being
narrowed, that the range of ideas is being limited, that many minds are closed . . ."
(P. 7).
The principle of shielding the committed from counter dramas was a strategy used
by the proponents of the Cold War vision to assure its vitality, but it was not the only
one. The rhetoricians of the Cold War rhetorical vision also took positive steps to
generate a continual flow of sustaining communication. This communication exemplified the principle of rededication.
The principle of rededication asserts that visions may be sustained through severe
criticism or through planned positive dramatizations designed to keep the vision
fresh and vital (Bormann, 1983). The first rededication technique requires a public
communication mechanism for rigorous and thorough criticism of backsliders. This
procedure is designed to bring the pressure of the rhetorical community to bear.
Ideally, the person takes the criticism to heart and admits shortcomings and errors in
a confessional way. The use of heavy criticism in sustaining commitment has been
part of several historical rhetorical visions. For example, criticism appeared central
to the Oneida Community as well as religious groups led by Jim Jones in Guyana
and David Koresh in Waco, TX.
The symbolic function of congressional anticommunist hearings-hearings that
were widely publicized and often broadcast-was to submit personae representing
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the Cold War enemy to criticism. Congressional committees called leading personalities from government, business, the academy, and the arts and submitted them to
intensive criticism for failing to live up to the motives and emotional evocations
embedded in the Cold War rhetorical vision. These nationally broadcast and
reported communication events provided the viewers with a mediated and vicarious
experience of mutual criticism. The unrepentant, such as Alger Hiss, accused of
being a traitor and submitted to intensive Congressional scrutiny, could then take
their place in the pantheon of villains in the Cold War rhetorical vision. The
repentant, such as Whittaker Chambers, Joseph Clark, Howard Fast, and Barbara
Hartle (Hoover, 1959), could come to symbolize the joyful replaying of the old
Prodigal Son fantasy type and return to the fold and become a hero or heroine for
the committed.
The rhetoricians of the Cold War vision, from its very beginning, turned to
changes in the scene of the Cold War as their primary tactic of providing newness to
their discourse. They pushed programs like the Marshall Plan to fight poverty and
despair around the world because such conditions spawn communism. They began
Radio Free Europe and emphasized the future action of "rolling back the iron
curtain" or "freeing the captive nations." They even instituted and celebrated
"Captive Nation's Day."
With the 1950 invasion of South Korea by North Korea, rhetoricians renewed
their effort to sustain the committed in their dedication to the Cold War vision. The
result was a third crusade in 1951. W e have discussed the way two earlier freedom
crusades were used as consciousness-raising rhetoric to get people to share the Cold
War rhetorical vision. It is not unusual for the same rhetorical devices to be used for
different purposes at different times. T h e reinstitution of the freedom crusades
provided one important form of sustaining communication used to rededicate the
faithful to the Cold War rhetorical vision. Those who had been drawn to share the
drama of the earlier crusades would find a new crusade a ritual of reenactment of the
key conversion process. By repeating the earlier form of a crusade, those sharing of
the Cold War rhetorical vision could participate in a ritual that would renew their
faith.
The third crusade was a militant march for the liberation of the enslaved peoples
of Eastern Europe. O n February 1 1, 195 1, two hundred exiles from Europe signed a
"Declaration of Liberation at Independence Hall in Philadelphia" ("For a Free
Europe," 195 1, p. 26).
Kennedy's "Peace Corps" provided the fourth and last crusade to rededicate
Americans to the Cold War rhetorical vision. Kennedy had expanded the bipolar
scene of the Cold War to include the third world nations, many of which were
embroiled in wars of liberation. Because of the leadership of this young, gallant,
Presidential Cold Warrior (and under the banner of "Ask not what your country can
do for you; but ask what you can do for your country?"), a new generation of
American patriots answered the call for the last crusade. Some 10,000 young
crusaders had joined the Peace Corps by 1964. The Vietnam War blunted the
enthusiasm of many Americans for the Peace Corps, but young college graduates
continue to volunteer in the 1990s without fully understanding the history of the
rhetorical vision that initiated their contribution.
The rhetoricians for the Cold War used a third strategy in line with the principle of
reiteration. The princ$le of reileration asserts that visions are sustained by restating the
COLD WAR FANTASIES
1i
key fantasy themes and types in new patterns that encapsulate the dramatic structure
of the vision in artistic symbolic cues, and casting the breaking news into the old
rhetorical forms to make sense of experience (Shields, 198la). The keynote address
before the true-believers in a rhetorical vision typically exemplifies the use of such
reiteration.
The rhetoricians employed the principle of reiteration by continually setting the
"threat" of communism in new configurations during consciousness sustaining
periods. When first employed in March of 1947, President Truman's "Doctrine" had
described the threat to Greece and Turkey as "a frank recognition that totalitarian
regimes imposed upon free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the
foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States"
(Truman, 1947, p. 2). By April of 1950, Truman had modified his description of the
"threat" to "a tyrannical force . . . which crushes the minds and bodies of those
under its control, and seeks to enlarge itself by aggression and false promises of
freedom and economic security" (Truman, 1950, p. 456). The reiteration continued.
For example, as the rhetoric moved clearly into its third phase, ten years after the
Cold War vision's begnnings, J. Edgar Hoover (1959) would redramatize the
fantasy in terms of "Communism is the major menace of our time. Today, it
threatens the very existence of our Western Civilization" (p. vi). Also, nearly 20
years after the vision's beginnings, Barry Goldwater (1965) recast the "threat" and
branded "communism as the principal disturber of peace in the world. Indeed, we
should brand it as the only significant disturber of the peace . . ." (p. 293).
Samples of continued attempts to explain new, here-and-now phenomena in
terms of the explanatory framework of the Cold War vision abound. One such
redramatization occurred with Kennan's original fantasy theme of communism as
the fluid stream that moves wherever allowed. In its new version, the Cold War
rhetoricians of the Eisenhower Administration developed a fantasy type indexed by
the symbolic cue "Domino Theory." They recast the dramatization as a figurative
analogy. If dominoes are set on end in proper order the fall of a key domino would
set off a chain reaction until all had fallen. The falling dominoes were like the fall of a
key country or territory to communism that would result in setting off a chain
reaction until the neighboring countries would fall as well. In line with the principle
of reiteration, Cold War policy advocates used the Domino Theory to explain the
commitment to South Korea in the 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960s, and El Salvador
and Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. Of course, in the Truman Doctrine speech,
the President spoke of the fall of Greece, then Turkey, then the entire Middle East,
and then possibly even Europe without specifically using the domino analogy.
In a similar fashion, PresidentJohnson (1965) reiterated the Defense of Freedom
fantasy type originally formulated by Truman by saying, "President Truman met
communist aggression in Greece and Turkey, President Eisenhower met communist
aggression in the Formosa Strait, President Kennedy met communist aggression in
Cuba. And, when our destroyers were attacked we met communist aggression in the
waters around Vietnam" (p. 1242).
As the. Eisenhower Administration continued after the election of 1956, the
strategy of the Cold War remained the same. The tactic, however, shifted to massive
deterrence and the development of missile technology. Both the USSR and the USA
promised to launch a satellite during the commemoration of the 1957-1958 Geophysical year. Most Americans, sharing the Cold War fantasies that their system was
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economically the strongest and best, expected the United States to be the first to
launch a rocket. When a Russian satellite called "Sputnik" flashed across the sky in
October, 1957, the Cold Warriors saw the event as a defeat for America almost as
great as the loss of China to Communism. The rhetoric of the Cold War soon
contained the powerful motivation to be the first in the next big space race, reaching
the moon. However, another big defeat in the Cold War came with the loss of Cuba
to the Red advance.
The presidential election of 1960 pitted two young and ruthless antagonists in
Vice President Nixon and Senator John Kennedy. Nixon was deep into the Cold
War rhetorical vision. He had made a reputation early in his career as an investigator
of the accused traitor, Alger Hiss. During the close and bitter campaign, the two
candidates debated on national television, and John Kennedy revealed himself to be
as much a cold warrior as Richard Nixon. Kennedy pointed to the American defeats
in the Cold War as evidence of poor stewardship by the Administration. He charged
that American prestige abroad had suffered and that there was a missile gap between
the USSR and the USA, to the detriment of the latter.
Kennedy won the close election, and one of the first big moves of the new
administration in the Cold War was to support a military invasion of Cuba. The
symbolic cue for the many chaining fantasies of the fiasco became "The Bay of Pigs."
Many dramatizations interpreted the event as another loss for the United States in
the Cold War.
October of 1962 was the apex of the Cold War tensions as a war of words over the
placement of offensive, nuclear missiles in Cuba by the USSR nearly escalated into
the mutually assured destruction of WWIII. President Kennedy's televised address
to the nation on October 22 exemplified the principle of reiteration of the appeasement fantasy theme of the Cold War rhetorical vision. Kennedy (1962) stated, "The
1930s has taught us a clear lesson: Aggressive conduct, if allowed to grow unchecked
and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war" (p. 717). The fantasy of Kennedy and
Premier Khrushchev standing eyeball to eyeball on the brink of world destruction
and Khrushchev's blinking first when he withdrew the Soviet missiles from Cuba
was widely shared by the cold warriors. Never again would the Cold War rhetorical
vision provide such hegemony over American foreign policy.
When Communisni appeared to be on the march again in Southeast Asia, in
countries like Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, it is not surprising that the Kennedy
Administration should view the events as a military crisis and take steps to counter it.
Upon his assassination, theJohnson Administration, largely staffed with the Kennedy
team, took up the battle in Vietnam. Ball's (1988) fantasy theme analysis shows how
the decision-making groups in both the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations
shared the consciousness of the Cold War rhetorical vision. She documents how the
vision provided the symbolic ground for the decision making that resulted in the
escalation of a police action into a war.
When Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency he retained most of Kennedy's
top decision-making personnel and &th them the Cold War group culture. Ball
writes, "As in the Kennedy Administration, Johnson and his advisers shared many
stories about the Domino Theory. Johnson's favorite version went like this; 'If you
let a bully into your front yard one day, the next day he'll be in your porch, and the
day after he'll rape your wife in your own bed' " (pp. 320-321). The shared,culture
created in both administrations by the Cold War vision resulted in the norm of
COLD WAR FANTASIES
secrecy. Ball judges, "like Kennedy, Johnson had an almost neurotic desire to
prevent information from 'leaking' prematurely to the press and public. . ." (p. 354).
LyndonJohnson ran for President in 1964. Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate, made the first real effort since the establishment of the postwar
bipartisan foreign policy to open the debate. Goldwater, breaking from Cold War
rhetoric, wanted to put the Vietnam war on the agenda and either untie the hands of
the American troops and win the war and bring the boys home or get out. The
Johnson rhetoricians refused to debate the issue and even refused to continue the
televised debates instituted in the previous election and again blocked the formal
channels and shielded the American people from potential countermessages.
The Cold War rhetorical vision was probably at its high water mark from the time
of the Cuban Missile crisis to the early years of the Vietnam war. As the war
escalated in the years after 1964, the inheritors of the vision, the children of the
WWII generation, grew restless and found the rhetoric less and less compelling.
PresidentJohnson's speech of March 3 1, 1968 is as good a marker as any for the time
when the Cold War rhetorical vision was clearly in decline. The old consciousness
sustaining rhetorical tactics were no longer working for large segments of the
American public.
Decline
From 1965 until 1980, the Cold War rhetorical vision was in decline. Three
rhetorical principles (explanatory deficiency, exploding free speech, and resurfacing
of competitive rhetorical visions) were undermining its hegemony as the sole
explanation for United States involvement in foreign affairs.
The principle of explanatory defciency asserts that visions will decline as they lose
their sense-making power (Cragan, 1975). Rhetoricians can sustain the integrity of
the inflexible vision by using a number of different fantasy types that deflect the
principle of explanatory deficiency. A major deflecting fantasy type consists of
dramas that portray the evidence of experience as misleading, shadowy, and not the
path to true knowledge. The extreme and unusual fantasy types that protected some
visions from the challenge of events did not work well for the Cold War rhetoric.
The Cold War rhetorical vision had an admixture of realism adopted from the
strongly pragmatic Power Politics rhetorical vision. The net result was that the
principle of explanatory deficiency came into play.
Initially, the Cold War dramatizations accounted for the developments with
cogency and plausibility. The Cold War rhetorical vision's fantasy type of international communism on the march accounted for the Chinese Communists joining
.hands with the Russian Communists. O n the other hand, when the Chinese
Communists broke with the Russian Communists, the drama of international
monolithic communism no longer accounted for events. Other examples of explanatory deficiency surfaced.
In 1956, the Hungarians revolted. Americans watched by way of television as the
Russian army defeated the young defenders of Budapest. Similarly, in 1968,
Americans watched the crushing of the Prague spring in Czechoslovakia. The words
of liberation had penetrated the Iron Curtain, but the Cold Warrior dare not follow.
The reality of nuclear destruction and the motive embedded in simple containment
froze the warrior into the role of bystander. Contradictory cracks in the surface of the
Cold War vision were widening. The conflict between the contradictory motives in
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'
the fantasies portraying the drive for liberation, the desire to avoid nuclear war, and
merely containing communist expansion created a choice-forcing tension that
undermined the vision's sense-making capacity. Even in the limited wars of protection, this contradiction hampered the rhetoricians and handcuffed action. In Korea,
the United Nations could not cross the Yalu river. In Vietnam, the United States
could not cross the demilitarized zone. In each case, Americans were driven by the
motive embedded in the drama of making the world safe for democracy, but frozen
by the motives in the fantasies of atomic destruction and the drama of containment.
As each succeeding here-and-now event highlighted this contradiction, the vision
lost more of its rhetorical power for making sense of events.
By 1968, television had become a major communication medium in the US.
Snippets of news relating to foreign policy developments, particularly to the
Vietnam war, appeared on screens daily. Much of the news fell outside the purview
of the Cold War rhetorical vision, and rhetoricians either had to ignore them or
explain them with tortured circumlocutions.
The principle of exploding ji-ee speech asserts that given a significant period of
sustained censorship there often follows an explosion of counter-rhetoric in the
informal channels. The pattern (Bormann, 1985b;Janik & Toulmin, 1973) is that the
newly surfaced rhetorical visions will result in an outbreak of creative energy, solid
achievement, high moral purpose, crackpot activity, silly behavior, and a thorough
challenge of the dominant rhetorical vision. The American free speech movements
of the 1960s repeated the pattern set by historical precedent.
As anticipated by SCT, in the 1960s, the continued use of the principle of
shielding by the inflexible, Cold War rhetorical vision brought the principle of
exploding free speech into play. As the last major attempt to thresh out foreign
policy issues in the campaign of 1964 failed, there followed an extraordinary
outbreak of revolutionary and reform efforts. As time passed, the Cold War vision
grew dim for many of the second generation after the war. For twenty years, the
proselytizing fantasy type of the missionary American had motivated Americans to
spread the word of democracy and freedom versus communism and tyranny. Many
of the new generation-identified by the symbolic cue "Babyboomers"-began to
share new fantasies that rejected the Cold War rhetoric and impelled them to bum
draft cards, spit on the flag, paint obscenities on their bodies, and march forth under
banners bearing the names of Fidel, Che, Mao, and Ho.
Those who still participated in the Cold War rhetoric could hardly discuss foreign
policy with those busily creating a new vision. Members of the new consciousness
confronted the Cold Warriors with nonnegotiable demands. They applied the
principle of innovation by creating dramas that were mirror images of those
celebrated in Cold War rhetoric. Those sharing the new consciousness often saw Ho
as a gallant leader battling against the forces of capitalistic imperialism. Changing the
scene, they shared fantasies that characterized the American GI, the American
government, American business people, and, by association, Americans over thirty,
as the leading villains.
The first attacks of the counter-rhetoric focused on the clogging of the channels of
communication. In 1964, at the University of California at Berkeley, the dissidents
organized a "Free Speech Movement." The Berkeley movement was extreme; it
focused on pornographic and scatological phraseology. It embodied the principle of
novelty. The professional communicators of television flocked to give the new
COLD WAR FANTASIES
impulse free time on the medium. It soon became apparent that if the rhetoricians of
the vision were amateurs, they were inspired amateurs who knew television and
knew how to use it for their rhetorical ends. To be sure, they caught the attention of
the cameras with their emphasis on pornography but, what is more important, the
new rhetoricians soon began equating violence and war with pornography.
In the streets and on television screens, growing movements dramatized messages
celebrating flower power, free love, the Age of Aquarius, an interest in astrology, the
use of drugs for spiritual experiences, the reform of clothing and hair styles. The
spokespersons rejected Cold War values like patriotism, sacrifice for the war effort,
and accepting the draft to fight around the globe. They denigrated capitalistic values
like a steady job, consumerism, and hard work. An amazing explosion of consciousness-creating communication fueled by media, by music, and by intensive consciousness-creating and raising group meetings took place. The new chaining fantasies
reached a critical mass, and the counter rhetoric gained momentum as the new
dramatizations caught up millions of Americans.
The new rhetorical visions explained many problems of society as the failure of
communication. The repressive nature of the establishment and its heavy reliance
on censorship explained much of the uptight behavior and lack of freedom of the
young. The result was a valuation of openness in communication. Better government required an end to secrecy, better information, and a general openness to tell
the whole story.
Thus, while the strategy of censorship and the clogging of the formal channels
worked for a little more than two decades to sustain the consciousness of the Cold
War and preserve it in its essentials, in the end, the reaction was unusually virulent
and violent. By 1968, the antiwar effort and the counter culture attack on some
cherished fantasy themes and types of the Cold War rhetorical vision had caused a
considerable decline in its membership.
The principle of resufacing competitive rhetorical urjions asserts that, with opened
channels of communication, the natural competition of alternative visions begins
anew (Cragan & Shields, 1977, 1981). However, to actuate this principle in a mass
media society, the five elements for gaining "critical mass" must be present.
The alternative visions shook more than just radicals and reformers from their
attachment to the Cold War rhetoric. In the present case, the resurfacing became
more prominent in 1968 when Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN), a member of the
Foreign Relations Committee, chose to run against President LyndonJohnson in the
Democratic primaries. McCarthy, his staff and a group of "come clean with Gene"
college students, who had cut their hair and gone door-to-door in the New Hampshire primary as part of "The Children's Crusade," provided access to the mass
media by running a close second in New Hampshire using an antiwar vision as their
platform. Soon, former Attorney General and then Senator Robert Kennedy declared for the presidential nomination with an antiwar message. Kennedy placed
second in the Wisconsin primary to McCarthy, but was assassinated onJune 5, 1968,
by Sirhan Sirhan on the night of his California primary victory.
On March 31, 1968, LyndonJohnson's rhetorical team decided that he should not
give a speech, then under preparation, suggesting a further escalation of troops in
Vietnam and a calling up of additional reserves. The team prepared inother draft, a
dovish anti-Cold War speech, announcing a stop to the escalation. Lyndon Johnson
appended to this speech a paragraph of his own announcing that he was withdraw-
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ing from the presidential race in the 1968 campaign. Leaders within the Administration like Clark Clifford, the Secretary of Defense, and Chief Speechwriter, Harry
McPherson, were influential in arguing for the change. Equally important was a
prestigious group called the "Wise Men," who had served as powerful, if informal
advisers, to presidents. Included in the group were such people as Dean Acheson,
Charles Bolen, Averill Harriman, George Kennan, Robert Lovett, andJohn McCloy. They, too, counseled a major change in foreign policy, one that went
essentially counter to the motivation in the Cold War rhetorical vision.
Richard Nixon won the election of 1968 and took into his administration a
hard-line and dedicated proponent of the Power Politics rhetorical vision, Henry
Kissinger. The internal rhetorical vision of the administration's foreign policy began
to change. Kissinger had written his doctoral dissertation on a preeminent power
politician, Metternick. By the end of the first presidential term, the Nixon rhetoricians had been converted to a Kissinger form of the Power Politics vision. By
February 1972, when President Nixon visited China, a twenty-five year old breach
between the two nations was bridged. The inside cue for the new policy was detente, a
term that referred to a scenario in which the major powers lived peaceably together
under conditions of balanced power and balanced nuclear deterrence. In May 1972,
the President visited Moscow and met with Premier Kosygin and Communist party
leader Leonid Brezhnev as further symbolic evidence of detente.
By 1972, Richard Nixon's rhetorical team had clearly defeated the Cold War
vision as the dominant administrative perspective on American foreign policy. As
well, they had decisively beaten the isolationist "Come Home America" rhetorical
vision that George McGovern's rhetoricians had developed and dramatized as a
competing alternative, not only to the Cold War vision, but also to the Power Politics
rhetoric of Nixon-Kissinger. As Nixon argued, "We must remember the only time in
the history of the world that we have had an extended period of peace is when there
has been a balance of power (1972, p. 9). The Nixon-Kissinger Power Politics
rhetorical vision was given the inside cue based on the title of Kissinger's (1964)
book, A WorldRestored.
Partly because of the popularity of the new foreign policy initiatives, many media
professionals began to dramatize Henry Kissinger as a hero. Party publicists pushed
the foreign policy successes of the incumbent, and Nixon was reelected in 1972.
However, the inertia of secrecy, held over from the Cold War rhetorical vision,
resulted in domestic and campaign tactics that culminated in the apprehension of
agents of the Committee to Reelect the President conducting a clandestine operation
against the Democratic National Committee. The mysterious break-in at the Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate complex caused sensational dramatizations
about the role of the President and his closest advisers in the scandal (Henderson,
1975; Porter, 1976). In the early years of the new presidency, additional breaking
news and a televised investigation by Congressional committees quickly brought the
fantasies to a critical mass. The result was an explosive chain of shared fantasies that
created a new consciousness. The inside cue for the emergent vision was Watergate,
and it contained within it the motivations to try to impeach the president and the
resultant resignation of Nixon followed by Gerald Ford's assumption of the Presidency.
From 1964 to 1976, the Cold War rhetorical vision had sustained serious blows
from new and powerful counter rhetoric. It had'lost adherents and failed to gain
COLD WAR FANTASIES
23
many new ones. Detente, Power Politics, and the counterculture and antiwar
movement had proved to be more novel, exciting, and successful with the American
public than the old inflexible rhetorical vision. In the campaigns of 1976 and 1980,
Cragan and Shields (1977, 1981) made a fantasy theme analysis of voters' response
to foreign policy rhetoric in Peoria. They found that there was still a small group of
people who typed into the Cold War rhetorical vision, but the adherents were not a
majority.
The rhetoricians of Jimmy Carter had brought a vision of international human
rights to the White House in 1976 (Rarick, Duncan, Lee, & Porter, 1977; Bormann,
Koester, & Bennett, 1978). It was in sharp contrast to the Cold War rhetoric of
d defeated in the Republican Party primaries of
Ronald Reagan that Gerald ~ o r had
that year. In his speech to the Southern Legislative Conference Carter said, "We
stand on what we have said about the subject of human rights. 0ur.policy is exactly
what it appears to be. . . . And it is specifically not designed to heat up the arms race
or bring back the Cold War" (Altenberg & Cathcart, 1982, p. 453).
The Carter humanistic social vision caught up numbers of Americans when it
seemed to work as when the Administration produced a Mideast peace accord
between Israel and Egypt and when the question of the ownership of the Panama
Canal was peacefully resolved. However, the administration rhetoricians failed to
get many Americans to share their dramatizations portraying the grain sale embargo
and the boycott of the Olympics as a suitable response to the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. Finally, the Administration's efforts at the freeing of American hostages
and the wide sharing of all of the negative dramatizations portrayed daily by such
mass media programs as Ted Koppel's Nightline set the scene for Ronald Reagan as
incoming President to explain the hostage crisis and the lesson of Vietnam in
dramatizations drawn from the Cold War rhetorical vision (Bormann, 1982a). In
1983, President Reagan told an audience of evangelicals, "But if history teaches us
anything, it teaches that simpleminded appeasement . . . is folly" (p. 369). In
addition, the rhetoricians of the Reagan Administration fit communist coups and
revolutionary movements in Africa and Latin America into the old fantasy types of
the Cold War.
To be sure, the breaking news blurred the picture somewhat with the activities of
Mideast terrorists and wars of liberation fueled more by religious fervor and oil than
by communism, and by the rise of the drug barons and the war on drugs. To
complicate matters further, the rhetorical team developing messages for Gorbachev,
the new leader in the USSR, were promulgating a new vision. The inside cues for the
new vision were perestroika (economic restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Carol
Saivetz (1989) of Harvard University's Russian Research Center argued that by
February 1986 and Gorbachev's first speech to the 27th Party Congress, he was
presenting a "new vision of international politics" stressing a "humanistic approach"
that contrasted sharply with "the traditional view that the class struggle operates in
international politics" (p. 325). Still, the Reagan Administration argued that a gap
had grownup between the military might of the Soviet Union and that of the United
States similar to the one noted by Cold Wamor Kennedy. The Reagan publicists
sought greater military appropriations and a new defense initiative that was cued by
the term "Star Wars" in the media.
The revival of the Cold War rhetoric motivated armed intervention in Grenada,
military aid and advisors for the contra in Nicaragua, and an invasion of Panama
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not so easily interpreted as an anticommunist move. In El Salvador, the old Cold
War rhetoric could operate as it had in Korea and Vietnam as a way to support an
anticommunist regime.
The last big flurry of Cold War rhetoric and evidence of its continuing power to
move to action came at the time of the Iran-Contra Hearings. With the persona of
Oliver North, clad in his Marine Uniform, redramatizing the old shared fantasies of
the Cold War, millions of viewers again shared the familiar narratives (Nelson,
1990), and many were moved to write letters or telegrams in support of the forces
represented by Colonel North. Some contributed money.
The renaissance was short-lived. The election of a new president in 1988 coincided with astounding events relating to the demise of communism around the
globe. With these amazing symbolic events in 1990, the Cold War vision imploded
(five years sooner than George Kennan had predicted in his long telegram of 1947).
Terminus
The principle of rapid implosion asserts that an inflexible, righteous rhetorical vision
tends not to decay incrementally but to implode on itself when an accumulation of
problems, triteness, inability to explain rapidly changing events, and contradictory
motivations become too great for the vision to accommodate.
The events of 1989-1990 resembled in their suddenness and structure a mirror
image of the events of 1946-1947 that brought the Cold War rhetorical vision to
critical mass. The communist governments of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
Bulgaria, Rumania, and East Germany all fell. The Berlin Wall came down and the
uniting of Germany simultaneously marked the official end of WWII and the
rhetorical end of the Cold War vision. When the dissolution of the USSR and loss of
communist power in the old Soviet Union followed these events, one could say that
the Cold War rhetorical vision did collapse very quickly.
By the end of 1990, the professional media rhetoricians and many others were
sharing fantasies that dramatized the Cold War as over. Shields (1990) made a
fantasy theme analysis using a thematic content analysis of 500 articles in the hard
news part of the print media. He discovered that the dominant interpretation by the
media regarding the events in Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, was to
dramatize the end of the Cold War. More intriguing was Shield's finding that those
who clung to the Cold War vision responded with five major reactions to the
breaking news. The first reaction was to sustain the Cold War vision and portray the
events in terms of a communist trick. Henry Mohr (1989), for example, asked, "Did
the KGB plot these reforms . . . by staging a false liberalization. . .which would be so
spectacular and impressive that no one in the West would suspect it was a fake" (p.
16)?The second reaction employed the old Aggression of the Totalitarian fantasy
type to argue that President Bush had failed and Mr. Gorbachev had won because of
appeasement. It was Munich, Potsdam, and Yalta again. The third reaction was to
call for caution and a wait and see attitude. Hasty proposals to cut back America's
defenses were unwarranted. The fourth reaction was for the Cold Warriors to argue
that while the war might be over in Europe, it was not in the rest of the world. The
rhetoricians pointed to Cuba and other communist threats in Latin America, to
Nelson Mandella in South Africa, and to Angola in support of their position. The
fifth reaction was to declare victory in the Cold War. In the words of William F.
Buckley (1990), "All we could ever hope to do was to contain the Soviet Union on
COLD WAR FANTASIES
the assumption that the odious system would eventually implode. It has, and we find
the world's second-largest outdoor slum" (p. C7).
CONCLUSION
The terminal phase of the Cold War rhetorical vision demonstrated that inflexible, righteous visions implode on themselves when they no longer explain here-andnow events and when they contain the seeds of their own destruction. With the
declaration of victory in the Cold War, the Cold War rhetorical vision lost its
impetus for continuation.
Viewing the Cold War rhetorical vision as a paradigm case allowed us, for the first
time, to mesh the findings of many previous SCT studies to discern, understand, and
explicate more fully the intricate life-cycle of a rhetorical vision. Three goals directed
our presentation of this case study: We sought to highlight the various rhetorical
dimensions of the Cold War, identify generalizations that would expand the utility of
the rhetorical vision component of SCT, and illustrate the rhetorical principles and
continua intrinsic to the emerging theory of group consciousness that supports SCT.
Our survey and case study allowed us to show that rhetorical visions exist on some
part of several continua. Visions exhibit mixed to pure qualities in relation to their
underlying righteous, social, or pragmatic master analogue. Also, visions exist on a
continuum of inflexible to flexible. As well, visions display attributes that place them
on a continuum of paranoid to healthy. Finally, visions reflect a placement on a
continuum of secretive to proselytizing. As indicated, the Cold War rhetorical vision
was a righteous, inflexible, proselytizing, paranoid, vision tempered only by the
pragmatics of the nuclear bomb.
We found 12 operative rhetorical principles. During the consciousness creating
stream of communication, three rhetorical principles functioned: Novelty, explanatory power, and imitation. As the rhetoricians moved to consciousness raising
communication, two new rhetorical principles operated: Critical mass and dedication. Regarding the consciousness sustaining phase, three other rhetorical principles
drove the Cold War rhetorical vision: Shielding, rededication, and reiteration. In the
period of decline, three additional rhetorical principles worked against the Cold War
rhetorical vision: Explanatory deficiency, exploding free speech, and resurfacing of
alternative rhetorical visions. Finally, in the terminus state, the Cold War rhetorical
vision exhibited the rhetorical principle of implosion. Of the 12 rhetorical principles,
five (shielding, explanatory deficiency, exploding free speech, resurfacing of competitive rhetorical visions; and implosion) apply to those righteous, inflexible, proselytizing, paranoid rhetorical visions that resemble the Cold War. The remaining seven
principles (novelty, explanatory power, imitation, critical mass, dedication, rededication, and reiteration) apply to all rhetorical visions.
Several rhetorical streams of communication contributed to the public consciousness driving the life-span of the Cold War rhetorical vision. These included
consciousness-creating, consciousness-raising, and consciousness-sustaining forms
of communication. Studies of a number of diverse rhetorical communities had
previously pointed to the existence of such streams. The Cold.,War case study
allowed us to illustrate that although these streams may surface throughout the
life-cycle of a rhetorical vision, scholars can often discern phases in which one or
another of the streams predominates.
Our survey and case study indicated that all rhetorical visions follow a discernible
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life-cycle. The Cold War rhetorical vision illustrates the pattern when the vision is
inflexible and terminated. Of course, not all rhetorical visions reach a terminus point
so abruptly. The issue of delineating the nature of other patterns, such as those
characterizing flexible rhetorical visions, requires further work.
We believe that some communication scholarship must work to be cumulative
and lead to generalizations of a theoretical nature. We recommend the technical
concept of rhetorical vision as an organizing theoretical approach for scholars seeking
to generalize their findings about the consciousness of rhetorical communities.
Rhetorical visions can encompass the gamut of shared consciousness from all parts
of the political, social, artistic, military, economic, and cultural spectrum. From this
case, and the existing studies from which we derived our analysis, we now know how
seemingly unrelated rhetorical visions may be combined into a masterful rhetorical
vision providing rhetorical continuity over time.
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