Why Your Emotions Aren’t Serving You
Nor Serving the Country
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Pathos, Logos, Ethos
You may have heard these. Maybe you haven’t. Either way, I’m not going to blow smoke up your butts and claim to be an expert, however, a basic understanding of rhetorical appeals is essential to understanding the general political and cultural climate of individuals, their groups, the population as a whole, and the conversation we’re about have.
Pathos, Logos, and Ethos are referred to as the emotional, logical, and moral/ethical modes of persuasion people use in argument and debate, all of which are effective and useful ways in which ideas are armed and defended.
That’s it!
It’s how politicians convince others of policy and law-making decisions. It’s how a CEO justifies acquisitions and business maneuvers to her workforce. It’s even how we prove to ourselves and those within our personal circles of choices within our careers and even the walls of our own homes. Not only are these rhetorical appeals methods of conversion, but they can also be used to easily discern—dare I say it?—the maturity and intellect of individuals and society overall.
This may seem like an oversimplification, but how often does a kid utilize reason to get a cookie? Sure, they may throw in a form of the “I was good” argument, however, they then lean on their number one strength—cuteness, either that or a tantrum, both of which are heavily influenced by pathos, or emotional appeal. Now extrapolate that to an addict or an emotionally dysfunctional individual and we begin using terms like: manipulative, abusive, and narcissistic. People like this bring about emotional exhaustion with everyone they interact with because Pathos is the sole rhetorical appeal they lean on, and I’ll ask, what good are unbridled emotions?
They are no good at all.
Emotions have their time and place and are rather effective when utilized properly. However, as the title implies, it is my strong opinion that emotions are destroying this country.
Other Ways of “Knowing”*
When it comes to facts and experiences, there is a “divide” that is neither profound nor novel. In short, there are two ways of analyzing an event in time, and that is knowing that something occurred and knowing how any particular event took place. Take death for instance. Sometimes it’s beneficial to know how a poor diet, malnutrition, the conditions of cancer, the details of a car accident or any unfortunate situation all can lead to the mortality of an individual. Any of this knowledge though does very little to comfort someone experiencing the death of a loved one due to the unfortunate and often sudden loss of life.
In other words, there’s a time for empathy and a time for practical understanding.
If we expound on that to the macro cultural effects we are seeing within modern, early 21st century America, we run into Social Justice** and the scholarship these activists advocate for. Often, they argue that “reason and evidence-based knowledge are unfairly favored over tradition, folklore, interpretation, and emotion” and recommend that emotion is a reliable but often neglected form of knowledge. In other words, they argue Pathos over Logos. They do not advocate for a power balance between the two methods of persuasion, but rather that Logos is more unreliable than what one feels in any particular instance. This is better known as The Postmodern Knowledge Principle.
Emotion is the sole reason the American political system is a republic with democratic processes rather than a pure democracy, because as we know, a pure democratic system is just mob rule and mob justice. We can talk about the bureaucracy and oligarchic deep state another time, but constitutionally speaking, our system was intended to put a check against Pathos, or emotional rule.
* Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity – And Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, pages 192-193
** There is a difference between this proper noun and the lower case social justice activists often use to twist and tailor events to their narratives and agendas.
Identifying Extremist Left Liberal Tactics
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
I’ve selected my phrasing with the title of this section very carefully, because I understand that the emotional rhetorical appeal applies to both the Far Left and the Far Right, however, the Far Right is not fundamentally changing the culture of America through race, gender, and other forms of identity politics. The Democrats and Radical Left have weaponized emotion, implementing an aggressive activist pathos approach to how Americans should look at each other and the every day issues that surround us.
It is the naivety of our culture they are betting on.
The Orange man was mean. When breaking down every criticism of and argument against the 45th President, at the core, resentment and hard feelings were due to his personality. Ignore the fact that Black unemployment* went to record lows under his watch, he Tweeted mean things. Disregard the fact that the United States became a net natural gas exporter for the first time since 1957 and U.S. oil production recently reached an all-time high, he was rude. President Biden signed away thousands of jobs because Lunch Bucket Joe and his platform hinged on the pathos appeal that he won’t be that mean guy Trump. And let’s not talk about Operation Talon and its mission to target child sex traffickers illegally within the United States. Cancel it Biden, Trump is the mean guy.
The Radical Left employed Saul Alinsky’s thirteenth rule effectively, covering up every Trump victory solely on this emotional approach, making him one of the most polarizing figures in American history. They are not only unable to separate emotion from results, but they also use this tactic to push forth radical policies like “common sense” gun reform, or polarize a simple heartbeat bill. The end of freedom and life justify the means to safety and security, a dystopian concept to say the least.
*Also found in The Maga Doctrine by Charlie Kirk Chapter 2
A Senile Old Man is What Happens When You Take Your Emotions to the Voting Booth
Anyone who is not willing to own up to the fact that Joe Biden was grossly unqualified to be the leader of the United States has an advanced form of pride that is beyond anything I can say to persuade their dysfunction otherwise. If you don’t have any buyer's remorse as a Biden voter or supporter, I fundamentally cannot trust you because you are blind to your own Pathos, unwilling to admit deep intrinsic biases within your own form of thinking and behavior.
He botched the Afghanistan exit!
In less than a year he brought a global disaster in such a way that not even his own dogmatic cult at CNN could completely ignore his incompetence in the matter. Because emotion made its way into the voting booth back in November of 2020, this Afghanistan shit show followed not even a year into Biden’s first term. There’s a reason this situation practically mirrors that of September 11, 2012. The same bureaucratic numskulls that fumbled the lives of Americans in Benghazi in the Obama administration are the ones in the State Department who are downplaying the fact that they stranded Americans in a Taliban controlled territory.
I’ll leave you with this last pathetic realization.
Americans have become a silly people. When someone loses their shit over not being able to mix slushie flavors in a McDonald’s and looting becomes a common practice because of outrage culture, we are no better than a child throwing a tantrum over a chocolate chip cookie. When we relish and market fear porn and have to have “trigger warnings” prefacing just about any opinion, we are not only emotionally unstable as a country, but we are incompetent and lack the resilience to utilize any form of grit on a personal level. When we care about our identity or internalize superficial values, we lose the American spirit, political democracy, limitations on the powers of government, the development of cultural Ethos and human rights. We lose legal equality, freedom of expression, the respect for the value of diverse viewpoints, the respect for Logos and reason, and the freedom of religion, belief and Pathos, all of which are tenets to true liberalism.
So, I’ll say again, you’re unbridled emotions are not serving you nor this country, and they never will.
