The Green Celebration

After introducing the reader to the seven fallacies he identifies, Heinrichs starts to explain what problems in logic actually mean and the problems that can happen in rhetoric as a whole. Fallacies can be bad for persuasion as their proofs don't connect with their conclusions, but if you achieve your goal of persuasion, perhaps because no one noticed the fallacies, can be good. The author points out that in rhetoric there is no right or wrong, or good or bad, there are choices, some better than others. Heinrichs says that you can have flaws in your arguments but that you can never argue the inarguable. He identifies seven out-of-bound areas of persuasion: using the wrong tense, being inflexible, humiliation, innuendo, threats, nasty language and utter stupidity. Arguments don't have to be perfect as most of the time people simply will not notice. Two years ago, during the Colombian presidential campaigns, many people had become fanatics of Antanas Mockus, but I believe that stepping into the out-of-bounds area in one of the most important speeches he made, deterred his image a lot.

I had liked Mockus so far, even though I didn't have a really strong opinion about the elections, since his arguments showed that he was serious and wise. How I perceived it was that he was not a typical politician as he did things for ideas and not power and he would be a president who made intelligent decisions. In May 30th, 2012 his defeat/victory(?) speech made me think that he was nuts and all his movement just crazy and fanatic. First, Mockus gave his whole speech in present and past tense. Unless he was blaming or talking about values, he should have used the future tense as, I assume, he wanted to talk about what should be done. The whole mood of his speech or ceremony was inconsistent with the situation. As the Al Jazeera reporter says on the video (below) that there was disappointment, all I could see and hear was people excited and proud. They could have chosen a side, either victory or defeat, to make something out of it, but his speech was just ambiguous. Mockus talked about the new nationality that his movement had started and that he did not think the ending justifies the means. His ideas were well-thought and could have been very persuasive had he phrased them some other way. Instead of talking about what should be done or what he would do to win the elections, Mockus talked about random unpersuasive things.

The second mistake he made was making an absurd celebration. Jaime Bayly made a video (below) commenting on Mockus' autogoles or self defeats, and he focused a lot on this speech. I remember watching the speech on TV and thinking that the whole green scene along his beard made it look like a St. Patricks celebration, but the I realized I was wrong as I heard them yelling, "Tu vida es sagrada."It was actually a hippie religious sect. He stepped into the "utter stupidity" out-of-bounds zone as he joined his followers in shouting phrases like "Si se puede," "Si se pudo"(really, what?), "Que no todo vale,""Su conciencia vale mas que un tamal," and many others. In rhetorics there is usually no right or wrong, especially in politics where it's good if it gets you votes, but when you break the few rules of rhetorics, it is catastrophic.

The Al Jazeera report on the elections shows the results neutrally, while you hear Mockus' celebration. 

Jaime Bayly mocks Mockus' speech in this video (it's in Spanish but you can put English subtitles).