If Dems are elected, they’ll do what we’ve been doing!
Recently, a common claim (what scholars of rhetoric would call a topos) has emerged among Trump and GOP media, and it goes like this: if Democrats gain the Hous...
We didn’t go to services
My wife and I didn’t go to services. We went to the planetarium instead. Before the Harry Potter-themed constellation show, a college student dressed as Dumbled...
It’s not just violent rhetoric, it’s the power of rhetorical violence we should be worried about
It’s a scary time in America.
In October of 2018 alone, a Florida man driving a van papered with pro-Trump images was arrested on suspicion of sending fourte...
Critics Chat: Indigenous Identity and the 2018 Midterms
In recent weeks, there have been high-profile public debates about the identities and legal standing of Indigenous people. On October 9, the Supreme Court refus...
The Rhetoric of Trump’s Zero Tolerance Immigration Policy
For more than five months, controversy has swirled around the Trump Administration’s Zero Tolerance immigration policy, which separates families for crossing th...
An Ambivalent Lament for John McCain
At the 2000 Republican National Convention, John McCain gave a particularly somber speech. Quoting Tocqueville, he said he was, like all Americans, "haunted by ...
America is in the middle of a battle over the meaning of words like ‘diversity’
This article originally appeared in The Conversation on July 23, 2018.
You might think that the culture war over race and immigration primarily transpires in...
Great Television: Trump and the Morality of the Screen
A study by the Harvard Shorenstein Center showed that in his first 100 days as president, Donald Trump was the topic of 41 percent of national news coverage...
Donald Trump and the Rhetoric of Honest Lying
Just last week, Canadian country music artist Shania Twain gave an interview to The Guardian in which she praised Donald Trump’s honesty. “I would have voted fo...
DeVos speech shows contempt for the agency she heads
This article originally appeared in The Conversation on Jan. 22, 2018.
When Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spoke at the American Enterprise Institute on ...