纽约时报 令人费解的时代策略(4)

This rhetorical mode is usually reserved for people who are not in charge of anything and who can put it to righteous purposes as easily as corrosive ones.

这种修辞模式通常是为那些不负责任何事情、并且能够像对待刻薄的人一样轻易地把它用于正义目的的人保留的。

An example that has stuck with me came in June, when the Los Angeles Police Commission scheduled an online forum to listen to public concerns.

6月，洛杉矶警察委员会安排了一个在线论坛，听取公众的意见，这就是一个一直困扰着我的例子。

It's a standard municipal ritual for officials to occasionally let themselves be dressed down by the public, but something about the digital setting of this session lent it a special vigor.

官员们偶尔会被公众斥责，这是一个标准的市政仪式，但这次会议的数字化背景给它带来了特别的活力。

Commissioners were treated to more than seven hours of righteous abuse, with callers lining up to deliver their own personal blends of fact-based faultfinding and creatively profane insults, through which the officials could only sit, impassive and professional.

委员们受到了长达7个多小时的、以正义之名的虐待，打电话的人排着队，发表他们自己的基于事实的吹毛求疵和创造性的侮辱，官员们只能坐在那里无动于衷。

It has lodged in my mind as a symbol of the number of bright, well-informed, motivated young people who are losing the last shreds of formal respect they once expected to have for their leaders and elders, internalizing forever that the people who manage the world may well be hapless against it.

它在我的脑海中留下了一个符号，标志着许多聪明、见多识广、有上进心的年轻人，他们正在失去他们曾经期望的对领导人和长辈的最后一点正式尊重，心中想着，掌控世界的人可能是反对它的。

"I am 16 years old, and I know more than all of you," one caller said, and it wasn't even meant as an insult - she seemed genuinely stricken by the possibility that this was all a police commission was.

“我16岁了，我知道的比你们所有人都多，”一个打电话的人说，这甚至不是一种侮辱——她似乎真的对警察委员会可能就是这样子的事实感到难过。

The differences between that caller and Carone could fill libraries. So could the differences between Carone and Sterling.

那个打电话的人和卡隆之间的差异可能很大，因此，卡隆和斯特林的差异也是如此。

But to different groups of people, each will appear valiant in the same way.

但对不同的人群来说，每个人都会以同样的方式表现出勇敢。

They will look like the spark of life in the face of dull, unresponsive institutions and officials who drone on in calm, measured voices even as they lose control of the things around them.

面对那些沉闷、反应迟钝的机构和官员，他们看起来就像是生命的火花，尽管他们失去了对周围事物的控制，但他们仍在平静、有分寸的声音中发表观点。

These people, and so many others like them, will convey the kind of urgency that appeals when you sense that something is wrong but have no interest in the difficult work of actually learning what it is.

这些人，以及其他许多像他们一样的人，会传达出一种紧迫感，当你感觉到有什么不对劲，但对了解它是什么的这项困难工作没有兴趣时，这种紧迫感就会吸引你。

The other witnesses in Michigan tried to channel a grand falsehood into the language of officialdom.

密歇根州的其他目击者试图把一个大谎言引入官场语言。

It's Carone you'll keep hearing about, though, because she took questions in the style of the present: not as a witness, but as a dramatist.

不过，你会一直听到的是卡隆的声音，因为她以当下的方式回答问题：不是作为证人，而是作为一个剧作家。

Why would she confine herself to specific, comprehensible claims?

她为什么要把自己局限于具体的、可理解的主张？

It hardly mattered what she was saying or what facts she wanted to assert; that's precisely the lure and the danger of it.

她在说什么或她想断言什么事实都无关紧要；这正是它的诱惑和危险所在。

At points, the people in the room behind her clapped or chuckled approvingly.

有时，她身后房间里的人会鼓掌或咯咯地笑。