The Fearful and the Factless

ARCS Ch. 7 – Proximity and Emotional Intensity

In light of the recent presidential debates and political campaigns I found the section of honorific and pejorative language to particularly interesting. The example of the pieced written by Peggy Noonan and the rewritten version reminded me of a video that I saw on Facebook comparing Donald Trump’s response to a comment and the way that John McCain responded to a different but similar type of comment. In the video a man in the crowd states President Obama is a Muslim and how there are training camps teaching people how to kill and Trump allows the man to keep speaking. The man ends with the question “when can we get rid of them? Donald Trump replies with, “We’re gonna be looking at a lot of different things,” and he has also gone on air in past years implying that President Obama could be a Muslim. And, although his replies do not implicitly state that the President is a Muslim he says things in a way that allows the audience to come to that conclusion, especially if they are already leaning towards that state of mind or type of thinking. In Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, chapter seven states “Proximity also influences the intensity with which fear is felt…proximity is related to emotional intensity…” (177). It seems as though because turmoil surrounding the Muslim religion still exists, Donald Trump has tried to use this to his advantage to play off the fear that some people feel towards the religion and create a sense of fear towards the President as well. He is attempting to make an appeal to people’s emotion through their fear. He uses similar tactics when discussing immigration as well, playing off anger.

It is my personal opinion that this tactic is usually off-putting and tends to seem radical in many cases, just as the Hitler examples in the book on page 178 seemed. The same video included John McCain’s response to a woman who calls President Obama an Arab. McCain takes the microphone from her and says, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. And that’s what this campaign is all about.” I would not consider myself to have been a supporter of McCain during that time but I can appreciate his response and I can see the appeals that I believe he was able to make in such a short response. He made concessions by stating that the President is a decent man and citizen, which implies that he can be trusted to make logical decisions or takes an honest approach to the campaign. And, he appeals to peoples emotions by using the word “fundamental” which in many instances, including this one, means core issues and will resonate with people who feel a sense of anger, disappointment, or fear towards the current state of fundamental issues. Much like the exampled “I disagree with you, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler” (178) McCain says the same thing, he disagrees with President Obama but doesn’t think he is a bad Arab. It distinguishes McCain as someone who has put thought into both sides of the issues and appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos.  He is still able to draw on the emotions that people feel towards current issues but in a way that seems more logical.