Pathetic Appeal: Rough Draft

Link to GoogleDoc

Since we were assigned to write for our blog audience, I concentrated on the characteristics most of us have in common: we're young, most of us lean left and think of ourselves as politically interested, we respond positively to humor and negatively (or at least unpredictably) to drama. It was difficult for me to find something I thought all of us could do, and in doing so I decided to cut a small segment of my blog population, those who would normally vote Republican (and not for Ron Paul) or who would not be abjectly horrified at the prospect of a Republican President Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, or Sarah Palin. I introduce "the Democrats" as the first group under discussion, because this title allows both inclusion and exclusion from the audience -- we're inside the leftist group, but we don't necessarily consider ourselves those who have failed to organize, since we're young. By both shifting and taking the blame, I can demand support without necessarily making the audience feel too personally guilty. I move through humorous enargeia images of both stereotypical party members, inviting identification with me as an observer of the absurd and repulsion for the idiocy of the other party, but I tried to use a self-deprecating tone in order to keep out of ivory towers and reassure the readers that we're not being arrogant.

I move through the piece with the theme of sabotage, first introducing it as the missing tactic of "fighting dirty," using examples from my life and widening the identification to the "we" first person. I then excuse the audience from decency, to which most liberals immediately gravitate as an ideology, by explaining how it doesn't work because Republicans will only meet us halfway. By convincing the readers to co-opt their shady tactics, but in a cleverer way than they can, and for ultimate justice, I allow the reader to participate in a fantasy of political overthrow, which I reinforce by explaining Republican ideological tactics with metaphors (the American soldier, Joe the Plumber) that liberals will probably instinctively reject, and then by suggesting that Ron Paul is the only sane option, and also that Democratic primary elections won't suffer from our absence. The fantasy is the catharsis that releases our tension with our own party's inactivity and our frustration with the high likelihood of a Republican president in 2012, turning this energy into the James Bond intellectual espionage affect that my readers will need to re-register as Republicans and not feel dirty. I think this radical-seeming tactic can be more appealing than more general ones like donating to the Democratic campaign, especially with a young audience, because it seems bigger and more "real."

Advice on pacing problems and flow will be especially welcome, because this sucker is a hot mess!