Lying as Heinrichs says, "isn't just wrong, it's unpersuasive" (pg. 40). I definitely agree with the author, as even good lies never last, but I'm sure that some lies, before they do fail, are persuasive and make everyone fall like idiots. The small successful part of lying uses rhetorics and gets people to believe the most absurd things.
Politics, as on of the places where rhetorics happens the most, is where manipulating people with emotion and logic means success. As I read Chapter 4 on Thank You for Arguing, I could perfectly what the author says about logos and pathos with the world of elections. Rhetoric could be a way for politicians to reach consensus with people for better, but a lot of times it becomes a tool for demagogues to gain power.
Logos is the tool of rhetoric that uses reason for persuasion. This part of rhetorics uses facts and statistics to form and argument and get people to believe it. All I can say is that 89.485% of statistics are made up. Politicians, in what I've seen, use numbers, often made up, to make people believe things. Voters and political candidates reach consensus by the "truths" that they show us through the media. I've recently started paying attention closer to such things. For example, unemployment under Obama's presidency has decreased substantially, because unemployment does not include people so discouraged that stop looking for a job. He as well has move the country towards a great immigration policy, after being the president that has deported the most people in US history. Colombia, as well, is undergoing huge improvements. After the poverty standards were lowered, poverty decreased!
Politicians all throughout the media bomb people with their logos, but for that to end up being successful, they manipulate the voters' emotions with their pathos in rhetorics. If Obama just said, "I will draft a new law that might eventually make some minor changes in the immigration policy," he wouldn't be as successful. Instead he travels to Florida, the Bronx, Puerto Rico and Arizona and talks about the upcoming transformation to the Latino's lives. Politicians know their people so they always say the perfect thing. Whether it's an emotive speech about fighting Al Qaeda or a thoughtful comment from a world leader, pathos make voters fall for politicians' logos.
Many politicians, for their abusive use of logos and pathos, become pathological liars.
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