Once again, Andrew Cline makes an important point in his Rhetorica. He acknowledges that the upcoming attacks on Kerry’s record (and Bush’s) will be effective:
Your best defense, as citizen, is to be aware that human communication is often not literal and that opinions are community possessions and may certainly and legitimately change with time and circumstances. Such understandings allow you to see this tactic for what it really is: a pathetic appeal meant [to] spark feeling, not thinking.
This is, after all, why I keep going on about rhetoric. Rhetoric works. Rhetoric works best on people who don’t know how it works. It works on everybody, to some extent, but the more you know about the tricks, the easier it is to make decisions on merits, not on the presentation of merits.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.