There has been a veritable flood of new information this week about Russian interference in American elections, including the release of a Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee report confirming the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russian operatives before the 2016 election. In a press release issued upon the full release of the Intelligence Committee report, House Speaker … Continue reading The Russian Trolls Are Hard at Work: Democrats/Liberals/Centrists Edition
Category: rhetoric
The Russian Trolls Are Hard at Work, and It’s Working
A little over a week ago, Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, William R. Evanina, released an update in the organization’s ongoing investigation into foreign efforts to influence American elections. Among its conclusions was the following: We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden … Continue reading The Russian Trolls Are Hard at Work, and It’s Working
The Rhetoric of Sacrificing [Grandma] for the Greater Good
About three weeks ago, archetypal vanilla milkshake, Tom Cotton (R.-Ark), introduced a bill in the Senate to prohibit federal funds from going to support the teaching of the “1619 Project” in public schools. If you haven’t seen it, the 1619 Project is a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles, poems, photographs, fiction, and more published in … Continue reading The Rhetoric of Sacrificing [Grandma] for the Greater Good
Rhetoric, Inevitability, and the Behavior of Voters
On November 5, 2016 — just three days before Election Day — the Princeton Election Consortium at Princeton University released results from a survey indicating that Hillary Clinton had a 99% chance of winning the presidency. The survey results raised doubts among some esteemed pollsters, but they also reinforced a lot of common sense about … Continue reading Rhetoric, Inevitability, and the Behavior of Voters
Americans Need to Stop Seeking Comfort in Feel-Good Riot Stories
Today marks one month since George Floyd was killed by four Minneapolis police officers. The uprisings that resulted from Floyd’s murder continue to rage across the country, and will likely continue for some time. In a number of cases, they’ve had significant positive results. Despite their continuation, news coverage of the uprisings has significantly died … Continue reading Americans Need to Stop Seeking Comfort in Feel-Good Riot Stories
What an Academic Book Review Does
Despite having a reputation for being an easy introduction to scholarly writing, book reviews in academic journals are a fairly-specialized genre. Their reputation for being easy comes from the fact that they're generally pretty short, so it's easy to juggle the relatively smaller number of demands than you'd have in an article or book chapter. … Continue reading What an Academic Book Review Does
Nazi Science: Coronavirus Edition
I decided to try posting this one on Medium. I posted the first few paragraphs below, and the full post can be accessed here: https://medium.com/@ryan.skinnell/nazi-science-coronavirus-edition-bac4c2a0ed15?sk=eb9579d771e4125548f77d2a84f7ddab Noted flim-flam artists and doctors of low repute—including Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil—have recently been trotted out by right-wing media outlets to bemoan Coronavirus social distancing directives as “worse than … Continue reading Nazi Science: Coronavirus Edition
Why Do People Keep Trusting Trump in a Global Pandemic?
In the past few weeks, even before nearly the entire country went on lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, Donald Trump has been addressing the country in daily press conferences. With all due respect—all due respect—they’re bananas. He contradicts his experts, denies the observable realities we’re all experiencing, and jovially pats himself on the … Continue reading Why Do People Keep Trusting Trump in a Global Pandemic?
Reflections on Super Tuesday: Yearning for Unity
In 1939, just months before WWII broke out with Germany’s invasion of Poland, rhetorician Kenneth Burke wrote a very detailed book review of Mein Kampf. It was Burke’s attempt to understand how Hitler had “swung a great people into his wake.” At the time, Germany was one of the most literate, highly-educated countries in Europe, … Continue reading Reflections on Super Tuesday: Yearning for Unity
“Debates Don’t Matter,” and Other Silly Notions
A little over 7 years ago, I wrote a blog post about the importance of debates in Presidential politics. Obama was running for re-election against Romney, and they were debating each other about a month before the election. At the time, I wrote: "As I surfed Fizzborg, the Twitter, and other haunts of the political … Continue reading “Debates Don’t Matter,” and Other Silly Notions
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