Rhetorical Activity

As I picked up the newspaper to try find some use of rhetoric, it hit me immediately that the political section would be full of it. Politicians use rhetoric almost every day, whether they choose to use facts to back up their arguements against other running mates or whether they use "empty promises" to persuade citizens to vote for them or to aid their cause in general. For example, the article I read on President Obama's budget plan even contained a section which was titled "the assumptions" and a section right after that titled "reality check." I found this interesting because it was basically putting both the made up and the factual rhetoric arguement right beside eachother. They actually read like this...

"The assumptions: Reduce the deficit by $637 billion over 10 years by letting the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 for singles making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000."

"Reality check: Letting the tax cuts expire has a good chance of happening. But the savings that achieves could be undercut if two other revenue raising efforts don't pan out."


It is as if actually calling yourself out on empty promises is a whole new strategy to convince your peers of something. If you call yourself out on having made empty promises with new preomises of filling the previous ones, you could essentially re-persuade a group of people with the same emtpy promises. Perhaps twice if you choose not to fulfill them again! Ha!