Who Was Biden's Audience?
As a onetime instructor in rhetoric, I was inevitably brought to look at Joe Biden's State of the Union address from that perspective, in paraticular two of rhetoric's main components : Audience: The intended readers or listeners of a message. Purpose: What the writer or speaker wants the message to accomplish, such as influencing an audience’s actions, thoughts or feelings on a subject. So first, to whom was Joe really speaking? Well, he made some inchoate threats, among others to justices of the US Supreme Court seated right in front of him, but from their facial expressions, it appears they were all offended regardless of their political alignment. He wasn't trying to persuade them of anything. Nor was he trying to persuade the roughly half the country to whom he indirectly referred in his opening passage: Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today. In other words, Donald...