"Idiot Nation" Argument Analysis

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10th October, 2012 Rhetorical Analysis of “Idiot Nation” When thinking of the United States one would conjure up imagines of happy people, greener grass, freedom, and of course, opportunity. However, an uncommon thing that one would think of America as a land of dumb people. Yes, that’s right, Americans having less than average intelligence. In “Idiot Nation,” Michael Moore offers a convincing argument on America’s stupidity and inadequacy by employing logical as well as emotional appeals and harsh diction to drive his point home. Moore does a great job connecting to his readers by using satire and humor to make his point, but does not sway from the seriousness of the subject by embedding facts about education. He does however, have an angry tone throughout his article, but he seems to use that in a way to give the reader a sense of anger towards the subject also, thus making the reader feel more connected with his text. As he talks about his personal encounters with school, he changes his tone once more as he makes us feel more sympathetic towards his subject. He really sparks the cognitive skills of the reader by using humor and facts to argue his opinion about the educational system, but at the same time he knows how to change his tone and change the readers’ emotion. Moore mesmerizes his audience by presenting horrifying facts about the “state of stupidity in this country”(128). The facts that Moore presents are very effective due to the shocking nature of them. Early in the text Moore illustrates his point presenting, “There are forty-four million Americans who cannot read and write above a fourth-grade level—in other words, who are functional illiterates”(129). This stuns the reader, who would have ever thought that in a country like this, that many Americans could be, well stupid. He goes on to give another statistic that Americans, on average, read

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