In the 1920s, the noble ideal of women’s liberation became tied to the smoking of cigarettes. In the 2000s, the noble ideal of LGBT liberation became tied to Israel’s image as an outpost of liberal democracy amid a desert of Arab backwardness. In both acts of mass persuasion, someone in effect said: Ethos, pathos, and logos be damned! There’s a better way. It is virtually impossible to understand how contemporary rhetoric and mass persuasion function without examining their rhetorical infrastructure as constructed by the field of public relations.
