Hello, everybody, my names Lawson Dixon and i will be your show host, writer and editor for this evenings podcast and i will be going over an article i found in the new york times opinion section called, "The Dangerous Politics of 'We Will Not Forgive'" by Author and former pastor Essau McCaulley. I am currently recording this podcast on Sunday, Sept. 9th -insert time- for my ENG 1101 Class for Professor McGinnis at the College of Coastal Georgia.
In this article the author, McCaulley uses several forms of persuasion to further persuade his ideology on his readers regarding the presidents speech on the Kabul attack that killed 13 US troops and over 60 Afghan citizens. In the presidents speech he states "We will not forget. We will not forgive. We will hunt you down and make you pay" McCaulley explains using both ethos and pathos persuasion that he completely understands where the president may be coming from stating how he understands the fear of combat deployment because his grandfather served in the military and how his wife has been serving for the navy for the past 15 years, but with that he has still thought of a different solution to combat Americas enemies such as the Taliban. A solution that involves forgiveness and love.
Using logos persuasion, McCaulley states that "we have seen the fruits of politics of revenge, but the politics of forgiveness and restraint remain largely untested." he continues on with this by suggesting "what if we stopped feeding the beast? what if a president stood before the country and chose a different path?" With this he tells us about the many risks, revenge may have on not just our country but the many innocent civilians of our enemy countries who dont know any better.
As a former pastor, McCaulley calls out many president who may stand behind the bible as a way to explain their reasoning for their decisions, stating "presidential declarations of death to our enemies have been cloaked in the rhetoric of the Jewish and christian scriptures. If presidents have invoked Christianity's sacred texts, we can look for the ethic of the cross in their moral reasoning." So McCaually then takes the Presidents moral reasoning through the scripture, Isiah 6:8 "who shall i send? Who shall go for us?" quoted by Biden, to explain the misunderstanding of the scripture and how it is not a way to justify the willingness of troops to fight for america but a way Jesus asks the prophet if he will speak in his name, which is a form of ethos persuasion by McCaulley.
In this article you can see Essau McCaulley rather opinionated stance on the speech given by President Biden and the many forms of persuasion through ethos, pathos, and logos to further convince his audience to think differently about how we handle our enemies. in this case the Taliban.
In my opinion i think it is a risk to choose forgiveness but one that has to be tried and with the worlds history, violence usually doesn't fully solve any conflict. the same way it usually doesn't feel any better after saying something rude to someone or hitting someone. Maybe McCaulley has a point. If we all chose to forgive rather than fight maybe the world could be a better place.
Thank you for listening to my rhetorical analysis podcast on the article "The Dangerous Politics of 'We will Not Forgive'" by author Essau McCaulley.
If you would like to read this article yourself i have cited my work in my project 2 file or you can look up New York Times, Opinion and look for "The Dangerous Politics of '"We Weill Not Forgive'" Published on September 19 2021 10:08 am.