When George Aiken suggested several years ago that the United States should declare that she had won the war in Vietnam and get out, it was a declaration of rhetorical determination of meaning. No one understands or understood the "situation" in Vietnam, because there never was a discrete situation. The meaning of the war (war?, civil war?) came from the rhetoric surrounding it. To give salience to a situation in an area roughly the size of one of our middle-size states and to translate its exigencies into patriotism-provoking language and symbolism was a rhetorical choice. There was no "reality" of the situations being in or not being in our national interest. At least George Aiken saw that the situation was primarily rhetorical, not military or political. And since it was produced rhetorically it could be exterminated rhetorically. As Edelman states ". . . political beliefs, perceptions and expectations are overwhelmingly not based upon observation or empirical evidence available to participants, but rather upon cuings among groups of people who jointly create the meanings they will read into current and anticipated events. . . . The particular meanings that are consensually accepted need not therefore be cued by the objective situation; they are rather established by a process of mutual agreement upon significant symbols."
Richard Vatz, “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation,” from Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol 6, no. 3, Summer 1973
