the good man speaking well

rhetoric has a reputation for being nothing but lies and empty words. it's one of the things i try to emphasize in the classroom -that this is what we associate with the term, although this use is fading, but that it isn't true. dr. P likes to say rhetoric is like the force, and it's your decision which side of that war to be on.

this may be the case. but i've said in another blog i keep that maybe that argument isn't good enough. the sophists got kind of a gleeful kick out of saying truth is subjective and that rhetoric is neutral. and some days, i get a kick out of that too.

but today i read this.
and it scares the hell out of me. because i got one of his mailers. and i've said about a dozen times in classes in the last week that it's not our job to fact-check with project 3. using statistics is a logos appeal even if they're lies. the presidential debates proved that. some candidates lied/misspoke more than others, but damn. there were a lot of numbers being thrown around that the audience had to more or less take on faith. and chances are good that when the candidates couldn't agree on a number, the people watching believed the candidate from whatever party they identify with. how many people go read a fact-checker's report? especially if they like what they heard?

as i said, i got one of the bridge mailers last weekend while i was in cleveland. i came home to this slick appeal to deny the bridge. and if i were a different person, it would be persuasive. he makes appeals to logic and emotion, asking don't i want the state/city to spend money on police, teachers, roads, etc, rather than this bridge, when he (ethos humanitarian appeal) is willing to build this bridge? it's good. i like teachers, police, firefighters, roads, etc. i would love to have consistent lighting driving through my city. i'd love never to pop another tire on a pothole i didn't see. i'd love never ever again to narrowly miss a manhole with a missing cover. i believe with my whole heart that education is a public good, and i'd like to see detroit students get the same sort of technology, teachers, and supplies that their counterparts at places like DCDS get.

so it's persuasive as hell.

it's also mostly lies, or kindof-lies. (i don't say this because of my political convictions, which i'll lay out on the table. i think capitalism is a heartless, fundamentally flawed system, and the longer we pretend it isn't the longer it takes for us to search either a) for an alternative or b) for a way to make capitalism work without doing so much damage. i'm not picky about which one we get.) yeah, it makes my skin crawl to think of a single individual OWNING and thus CONTROLLING a bridge between two countries. sure. but that doesn't change the fact that it's not exactly true. this doesn't really cost the city a damn thing. canada foots the bill, and they keep the tolls (on this bridge only) until our half is paid off, at which point we (canada and the US) start splitting the tolls. call me crazy, but that sounds like a good deal. but he's planted the idea that it will be michigan money. and it's possible enough people will believe it. and the fact that it's based on lies, or spin, or whatever you want to call it, doesn't make it less persuasive.

aristotle said that rhetoric (a technique) was insufficient without practical wisdom to guide its use. augustine exhorted his readers to study rhetoric but let god guide them in the use of it. quintillian said rhetoric should be the art of the good man speaking well. it's not coincidence that he put the good man part first.

we teach good research methods in class, and we fact-check, and we run papers through safe assign. but i'm not sure how well the message gets across that this is bigger than academic honesty, and Doing The Work Yourself. the greeks believed it was important to study rhetoric in order to speak well, yes. but they also believed that a man who didn't study rhetoric, who couldn't recognize when his emotions were being appealed to, and weigh that in his mind, would be vulnerable to those who wanted to take advantage of him. famously, in one of plato's dialogues, a man brags that because he speaks well, he can convince people he knows more about what's good for them than their own doctors. it sounds laughable when we read it, but it really isn't. this kind of thing happens all the time.

we vote in a week. we decide the future of this country in a week. i want to believe we will elect the good person speaking well. but my fear is that we will elect whoever had the loudest voice, or told us what we most wanted to hear, or who spent the most money. and really, all of this is bound up, or ought to be, in those classroom discussions about good research, and accurate sources, and Doing The Work Yourself.