Spider Bites

The first few times I read through Steven Staples article about the relationship between globalization and militarism a few things stood out that I was eager to call him out on. It was very apparent that he was using a web of rhetorical fallacies and the venomous verbiage of a skillful up-talker.

Every time I sat down to write I was fueled with fire and a shoe, ready to brand the authors rhetoric as fraudulent and end the spiders’ career of deceitful spinning. As soon as my pen scribbled the words, “[t]he author [was] ineffective” (Zebra 1) an empty void as large as the pit in my gut emptied my brain. I wanted to claim it was just the authors toxins getting to me, but the arguments I wanted to refute weren’t even claims he made.

Calling his rhetoric ineffective because it is laced in trickery would be paramount to saying a trap door spider isn’t a spider because it uses a less noticeable and more aggressive means to catch its’ prey.

Through the means of open ended examples and usage of words that are either exaggerations or intense pacifiers Stephen Staples is, indeed, very effective in persuading proponents of globalization that their movement towards a greater world economy comes with a price of detrimental consequences.

Staples makes few claims on his own: “[economic] inequality is growing … conflict and wars are emerging[;] it is important to see the connection between [the] two” (Staples 44). Then, by providing supporting evidence about the escalation of wars—to include civil wars—readers stop relying on Staples to provide them with conclusions and begin to interpret the situations on their own. If this happens to you, you best be careful! You are walking into lethal trap. He specifically mentions the results of economic inequality happening in Asia—in 1999—which caused a violent stir with probable use of nuclear weapons (45).

Wait, what? Economic inequality leads to global war? This claim stands out like a sore thumb, possibly sore because it just got bit by the arachnid of rhetoric. Most readers will keep reading without batting an eye, that’s the first symptom of his bite, thinking the argument was their own idea. Staples never makes that heavy of a claim, so yes, the reader came to that conclusion on their own. How wants to debate themselves? If you answered, ‘not me, that’s crazy!’ then you will probably accept that somewhat over-the-top argument because youa came up with it yourself. Rather, you would have if you read Staples’ article and not this one first. If you answered, ‘I won’t debate myself, but I’ll take a spider on any day,’ congratulations, the venom has made you terminal. You are going to disregard the argument altogether wither because it is farfetched or because it isn’t even one of his claims, so instead you will settle for his first and actual claim, “economic inequality is growing”. Ipso facto you are still persuaded, even if it is just a little, by his intricate fallacy.

I think this is the material I will cover in my rhetorical analysis.