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Rhetorical Analysis

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Politicians call for missile defense projects. Many defense projects have failed and cost not only the government but taxpayers over 50 billion dollars. Lee Fang, a writer for The Intercept, shows how ineffective these programs have been in the past. The persuasiveness of Lee's argument in his article “Politicians Use North Korea H-Bomb Fears to Pitch Wasteful Missile Defense Projects” is based on a logical approach using facts, (logos), an emotion approach trying to rally us up (pathos), and on his credibility and the creditability of his sources (ethos). Lee's appeal to our logical (logos) side is based on facts. He uses examples of projects that have failed, why they have failed, and how much they have cost us, the taxpayers. These projects …show more content…

Knowing the audience that would read this article would feel enraged by the enormous amount of money. By bolding and underling key words that support his emotional approach he emphasizes words to cause a reaction such as failed, idle, special bonus, lobbying, biggest donor, top donor, series, enormous flop, lavished policymakers, manipulated, and never-ending spiral. These carefully chosen words are brought to the reader’s attention. The amount of money being wasted is in bold $1.7 billion, $700 million, $2.2 billion, $230 million, and $40 billion. By bringing these words to our attention he knew it would cause an emotional response from the reader. Lee tells about a project that was reinstated after the first attempt failed. Corporations are making the money and contributing it to some of the politicians supporting these projects and are their biggest donors and supporters. The same companies spend tens of millions trying to rally support and winning over officials with huge incentive pay packages and even have a bonus for people who leave to take high level government jobs that would be in a position to help the company with future legislation. Billions of dollars are being wasting on these programs. Most of his audience couldn't even image wasting a million dollars let alone fifty billion. Lee was trying to reach,

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