Points of Entry
For this exercise, I pulled a tweet regarding a large drug bust from FOX correspondent Sean Hannity’s twitter (see below). As the tweet comes from Hannity himself, the entire rhetoric of his public profile (meaning his political standpoints, societal position, and past experience) is attached to the statement. For this reason, he doesn’t even have to state an explicit argument for his tweet to be perceived a certain way.
The report comes from a conservative panderer in favor of Trump’s multibillion-dollar border wall and was intended to exemplify the reasons such a wall was proposed to a like-minded, xenophobic audience. However, since the article was shared beyond Hannity’s website into the Twittersphere, the majority of responses came from a more tolerant perspective. Users who chose to read the entire headline pointed out how the drugs actually came through a point of entry and were seized by border patrol guards, disproving the narrative that large amounts of drugs pass through unsecured areas.
The irony of Sean Hannity tweeting this out and posting it on his blog is that there really couldn't have been a more kairotic moment for this event in making an argument against the wall. Each of the above threads makes basic appeals to logos in response to Hannity’s implied argument. These users pointed to this drug bust as just that: a drug bust. It exemplified how the crime that Trump generalizes is happening in reality, and how we don’t need to build a wall that expands across the entire geographic border. The only refutation made was that if anything, the government need to increase security at points of entry while legalizing and decriminalizing narcotics to take power from the cartels illegally transporting drugs across the borders.
There was not one response that was affirmative to the wall that was left without response. Some might say that the positive responses to Hannity from Ericajn and Cherie Carroll were made with appeals to pathos, but in reality, they just come from misinformation and ignorance. The demographic of FOX news viewing wall supporters is simply too brainwashed by the propaganda that is circulated by the network and its contributors. Instead of thinking critically about why their political figures may be supporting such an undertaking, they subordinately follow along and support the monument to fear, white supremacy, and capitalist surplus.
Personally, I would respond with the same logic-based argument as all of the users who oppose the wall. For this particular instance, I didn’t even bother. Time and time again, conservatives exhibit their unwillingness to respond to actual facts, opting to remain ignorant and believe fabricated lies from the GOP. I’m burnt out on even trying to state facts to a brick wall.
