The Rhetoric of Joy

What Kamala Harris and Shakespeare's Henry, Earl of Richmond have in common

This past weekend, I pulled a shift at the Virginia Democrats booth at the state fair. It was incredibly heartening. So many people stopped by to talk to us, to ask for yard signs or buttons. I gave out quite a few Harris-Walz friendship bracelets.

Something that struck me was how many of those people expressed their shock in the same words: How can people support the monster on the other side? How do they not see what he is? How can they see what he is and still stand with him?

I told them something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: Fear is a powerful motivator. He validates their fears, then he tells them that they’re actually strong and powerful (especially if they punch down at others).

Fear is a powerful motivator.

But so is joy.

The rhetoric of fear versus the rhetoric of joy is something I’ve been thinking a lot about these past couple of months, as Kamala Harris built a campaign on joy. The GOP wants to use this to paint her as silly or unserious, I find it to be a brave and powerful rhetorical strategy. In a cynical age, when earnestness is so often derided and a woman’s laugh is a target for mockery, she has blazed forth as a joyful warrior — and has been rewarded with electrifying energy.

I was so deeply moved by what she said during her interview with the National Association of Black Journalists.

I find joy in the American people. I find joy in optimism, in what I see to be our future and our ability to invest in it. I find joy in the ambition of the people. I find joy in the dreams of the people. I find joy in building community. I find joy in building coalitions. I find joy in believing that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down but who you lift up.

Our nation, for all its flaws, is an aspirational one: there are ideals we are supposed to be reaching for, of liberty and justice for all, of the pursuit of happiness.

Shouldn’t we be joyful about that?

On Teaching Rhetoric

When I was teaching English composition at a community college, one of our units was on rhetoric.

This was my favorite unit, and I probably spent a little more time on it and went a little deeper than was truly necessary. Many students commented on enjoying that section, though, because it introduced a new way of thinking about the media they engage with.

I always say that an awareness of rhetoric makes you a better listener, a better reader, a better writer, and a better thinker.

We are inundated with so many messages on a daily basis, far more than our ancestors ever had to deal with, and the bulk of those messages are crafted in some way to manipulate us. They’re using rhetoric; if you have that knowledge, too, it’s easier to see how and why someone is trying to manipulate you.

I didn’t actually get to do my favorite part of rhetoric in those classes — the devices and their arrangement — because the course’s requirements focused more broadly on the rhetorical strategies of ethos (the appeal to character and credentials), logos (the appeal to logic and facts), and pathos (the appeal to emotions and values). In class, we’d do things like look at advertisements and dissect which appeals marketing teams were leaning on for different products and to yield a desired result (usually, to buy a product). I’d share some examples from famous speeches, too (and in the classes where the students had already figured out they could utterly derail me by asking a question about Shakespeare or ancient Rome, I’d give a little mini-lecture on the differences in rhetorical strategy demonstrated by Brutus and Antony in Julius Caesar. This happened at least three times.)

One thing I stressed to my students, because I think it’s critically important, is that when a speaker is using pathos, fear is the easiest button to push.

It’s so easy. Making someone afraid takes almost no rhetorical skill whatsoever. Just threaten something they value. Simple.

Joy is much, much harder. But it’s also more powerful.

Fear enervates; joy energizes. This is a feature, not a bug, for the people who want to push the fear button. They need their audiences to be exhausted. When you’re exhausted, it’s much harder to think critically and make informed choices. Your body goes into survival mode, which is not the best place for nuance.

A Shakespearean case study:

This plays out fabulously in Richard III.

Towards the end of the play, the night before the Battle of Bosworth Field, the opponents King Richard and Henry, Earl of Richmond (the future Henry VII) both get straight-up haunted by the shades of all those who Richard wronged (and either outright killed or drove to their deaths). They hiss in Richard’s ears, each one telling him “despair, and die.” It’s a drumbeat throughout the scene, over and over again as they remind him of his faults and his crimes, as they wish him bloody doom, as they sit heavy on his soul: despair and die.

To Richmond, they give encouraement: “sleep in peace, and wake in joy”; “Dream of success and happy victory”; “Live, and beget a happy race of kings”; “cheer thy heart, and be thou not dismay'd.” So many words not only of hope, but explicitly of joy!

Richmond wakes up and, when asked how he slept, answers them accordingly: “My soul is very jocund / In the remembrance of so fair a dream.”

He then goes on to give a rousing speech to his troops. It’s not Shakespeare’s best—this is years yet before he’ll write St. Crispin’s Day or Friends, Romans, Countrymen—but it’s good! Throughout it, he paints a picture of a prosperous future for the men who fight for him:

If you do sweat to put a tyrant down,
You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain;
If you do fight against your country's foes,
Your country's fat shall pay your pains the hire;
If you do fight in safeguard of your wives,
Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors;
If you do free your children from the sword,
Your children's children quit it in your age.
Then, in the name of God and all these rights,
Advance your standards, draw your willing swords.
For me, the ransom of my bold attempt
Shall be this cold corpse on the earth's cold face;
But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt
The least of you shall share his part thereof.
Sound drums and trumpets boldly and cheerfully;
God and Saint George, Richmond and victory!

The rhetorical devices in there are lovely, too, with repetitions that create a very solid feeling in the listener, a confidence that all will be well. But see there again, the words of joy, particularly in the final couplet, joining the ideas of cheerfully and victory.

Richard, on the other hand, wakes in fear and acts accordingly, passing that fear on to his followers. He’s full of portents of doom as soon as he rises: “the sun will not be seen to-day.” And when it comes time to speak to his men, his speech is full of words of fear. Even as he tries to hype them up, he also straight-up admits that he perhaps cannot justify his cause with anything more than “might makes right” — and if that means damnation, well, only cowards would worry about something like that. Then we get this couplet:

March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.

That is an exit couplet. I can’t prove this beyond any doubt, but that right there is a damn exit couplet (and I am indebted to Ralph Alan Cohen and Sarah Enloe for pointing this out to me). A rhyming couplet at the end of a long speech is supposed to end a scene. And though it’s not in the stage directions, Richard should try to exit there, only to realize that no one is behind him, because his next line is: “What shall I say more than I have inferr'd?”

He then goes on to paint a picture exactly opposite of Richmond’s: not the joy of victory, but the terror of defeat.

Remember whom you are to cope withal;
A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,
A scum of Bretons, and base lackey peasants,
Whom their o'er-cloyed country vomits forth
To desperate ventures and assured destruction.
You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest;
You having lands, and blest with beauteous wives,
They would restrain the one, distain the other. […]

If we be conquer'd, let men conquer us,
And not these bastard Bretons; whom our fathers
Have in their own land beaten, bobb'd, and thump'd,
And in record, left them the heirs of shame.
Shall these enjoy our lands? lie with our wives?
Ravish our daughters?

This works well enough that the army does follow him to battle, but look at all that language of fear. He’s not promising prosperity; he’s speaking of “assured destruction.” It’s effective—up to a point. We certainly see in the modern day how being told what you’ll lose can be a motivation, and the way Richard speaks of Richmond’s army has parallels in modern political discourse as well.

Two men on the eve and morning of battle. Richard chooses fear; Richmond chooses joy.

So what happens?

The bigger picture:

In a lot of ways, this tension between the rhetoric of fear and the rhetoric of joy mirrors a greater challenge—a systemic challenge. Democracy is hard. Representative governments are really, really hard. A republic has to be constantly monitored, adjusted, and tweaked to ensure that it keeps working, even as bad actors find and exploit every weakness in its structure that they can turn to their own selfish purposes. To function, it requires citizens to be informed, alert, and engaged.

Autocracy is so much simpler. It requires less upkeep. Autocracy requires citizens to be uninformed, ignorant, and complacent. It makes things easy for them by taking away all their choices. You can be lazy in an autocracy, so long as you’re also compliant. For people who don’t like fighting the hard fight, that can sound very appealing. Someone tells you what to think and believe; you don’t have to exercise critical thinking skills, examine your own principles, or do the hard work of questioning and challenging your worldview.

There’s a reason I wrote this passage for The Bloodstained Shade:

Liberty asks a lot of you. Liberty takes work. Liberty is harder. But it’s ultimately more powerful—and more rewarding.

Kamala Harris isn’t afraid of this challenge. She embraces it. She knows how powerful it is.

Donald Trump embraces the rhetoric of fear because he is, I suspect, a deeply fearful man. All his accusations are projections, and projections are rooted in fear. Fear of failure. Fear of looking foolish. Fear of losing. Fear of inadequacy. I’d pity him, if his fears hadn’t contributed to so much destruction and chaos over the past decade, if his fears didn’t make him seek to strip away the rights, freedoms, and joy of others.

Because he is not a man who knows joy. I doubt he has ever had a moment of pure joy in his life. He’s not a happy person. He’s certainly not a content one. And, crucially, he has no empathy, which means he can’t push any other pathos buttons. He wouldn’t know how. He can’t relate to people with any humanity. He can’t call upon the pathos of community, of love, of compassion, or of joy.

Kamala Harris can and does. She can push so many pathos buttons in conjunction with joy, because she has empathy, she can relate to people, she knows what it is to feel love and compassion and vulnerability. But it’s joy that she has made the centerpiece. It’s an act of almost astonishing trust in the American people, to call upon the rhetoric of joy in this moment—a show of faith, a belief that we are still up to the rigor of defending liberty.

Let’s get out there and prove her right.

After all, Richard III lost the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Some further reading on Kamala Harris and joy:

• “Why Kamala Harris’ New Politics of Joy Is the Best Way to Fight Fascism,” Anat Shenker-Osorio for Rolling Stone (8/17/24)

• “Kamala Harris Is Using a Strategy Rooted in Civil Rights Activism,” Sheryll Cashin for Politico (9/29/24)

• “Kamala Harris is tapping into the Black Joy movement,” John Blake for CNN (8/25/24)

• “Kamala Harris is showing that joy can be a strategy,” Errin Haines for The 19th (9/25/24)