In 350 BCE, Aristotle said, “An emotional speaker always makes their audience feel with them, even when there is nothing in their arguments, which is why many speakers try to overwhelm their audience by mere noise.” Ah, it is as if the ancient Greek philosopher could predict the embedded turmoil in the 2024 US presidential race. Attacking electric vehicles is part-and-parcel of this year’s noisy, emotional language on the campaign trail.
Attacking EVs is so common that no longer is logical reasoning necessary or even persuasive to some audiences, and EVs are in a whirlwind of symbolic partisanship and rancor.his warning last week about the inevitability of a “blood bath” if he is not elected US president in November. Now he insists that the comment was made in the context of electric vehicles. No, he repeats — he wascalling for his supporters to rise up with violence. He was equating the rise of EVs with a violent demise of the auto industry. His anti-EV rhetoric is part of a pattern of hyperbole and conscious misstatements. Somehow, to this consummate showman, evoking a mass human slaughter — massacre — is entirely appropriate. Clearly, it’s time that we engage in some critical reflection on how politicians draw upon different dark linguistic tools to gain political goals and objectives. Trump likes to use the rhetorical strategy of “ad baculum,” which Oxford University Pressas an appeal to forc