Further

In Cold Blood has seduced me since we were assigned timed writing based on an excerpt of what I now know, is the beginning of the book.

There was something that simply captivated me. Possibly, that hint of mystery Capote inserts into his writing. Maybe, it's his style that grasps my inner thoughts and feelings, and dances with them in a very tempting fashion. I would've never thought that this story was going to be about murder.

Holcomb seemed like the perfect suburb to raise your kids (considering you're a farmer or somehow related to agriculture), far away from pollution, stress, and well, the real world. But it turned out to be relevant after people knew there were four gunshots and six murders. It wasn't the perfectly mundane place I thought it was, anymore.

Somehow, this reminds me of my country. A few people knew about Colombia's coffee, back in the sixties. But in the nineties, everyone knew what Colombia was. But not for its coffee, but for its wonderful A-class cocaine. I think this is part of our nature. We're prone to remember the negative thoughts. They dig a grave in our brain, exposing our malleable flesh to the crudest of our mistakes, imprinting a scar that's poorly taken care of, that documents everything we want to forget.

There's also something about Mr. Clutter that reminds me of myself. He seems so normal. His life seems in order. He has a wife, and kids. He has trouble with his wife's health, and not everything is perfect, but there's a balance. But there's something that tells me there's a secret inside, waiting to burst. I'm not sure what it is. Despite the extremely detailed description of his self, I'm sure there's something beyond. Some value that's present, but invisible to the naked eye, that is not willing to see further.

There's still that thing that keeps me reading. I'm kidnapped. The beautiful gift of imprisonment, bestowed on me. I want to go forward. I want to know what's going to be mind-shockingly wrong with Mr. Clutter's sanity. I want to see him shoot one of the four bullets.

Building Character

We're always trying to pursue our dreams and goals, no matter the consequences or the lack of morals through the process of obtaining so. No matter the ridiculousness of our arguments, we're set to win whatever we're fighting for. One could easily say we're much like the early Sophists, who argued to win, using cheap rhetoric.

One must emphasize "cheap" in that sentence, as rhetoric may be narrowed down to having one rule: you can use logical fallacies as long as they're related to what you want to obtain, and that they don't result in a fight.

Nixonian (eponym) Rhetoric is probably my favorite kind of rhetoric. Heinrichs uses the example of what probably is the most used phrase by politicians to justify remaining in armed conflict: "If we pull out now, our soldiers will have died in vain." I couldn't think of a better example for Nixonian Rhetoric, because as everyone but a few uninformed cavemen know, Henry Kissinger (Nixon's Secretary of State) concluded peace negotiations for the Vietnam War in 1973. But that's just a fancy way of saying that the US foreign policy failed and they lost a war they were going to lose ever since they got in. They lost, proving their soldiers died in vain, and that their veterans are suffering from PTSD in vain as well. The most used phrase to defend armed conflict never really ensures their soldiers will not die in vain at the end of the war, and there's even a 50% chance they will die in vain. Politicians are just appealing to your guilt in order to justify their mistakes.

There's also the "appeal to popularity" fallacy, or as Heinrichs calls it, the Spock for President fallacy. I could think of one example for this, an axiom I've hated for a long time now: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." If you really think about it, it isn't quite logical, but appeals to someone's attempt to build character. If I get blood poisoning in my right leg, doctors will most likely amputate it. It didn't kill me, but it definitely didn't make me stronger. You might be thinking that it might build character and "make me stronger," but then again, I might suffer from severe depression from then on. That's not making me stronger anymore.

There's a simple manner of avoiding from making logical fallacies seem ridiculous and eventually hurt our very valuable arguments, which narrows down to one simple differentiation: right vs. wrong. When someone says what you're doing is wrong, find ways to deviate it from seeming it to be wrong (and works as well by convincing your opponent how what's right is truly right.) And there's also avoiding arguing what's inarguable:
"1. Switching tenses away from the future.
2. Inflexible insistence on the rules--using the voice of God, sticking to your guns, refusing to hear the other side.
3. Humiliation--an argument that sets out only to debase someone, not to make a choice.
4. Innuendo.
5. Threats.
6. Nasty language or signs, like flipping the bird.
7. Utter stupidity."

Thank You For Arguing Chapters 11 & 12

The boomerang effect (and how to avoid it): Speakers tend to use arguments that persuade only themselves, rather than the subject to be persuaded: his audience. It's similar to sympathy in argument by emotion, only this case, you need argument by logic. Whatever you're choosing is very "'advantageous' - to the advantage of the audience"

Babbling: Aristotle argued that arguers tend to repeat themselves over and over, revealing fundamental principles on which your argument is based.

Commonplace: determine what your audience is thinking, in order to appeal to their common sense. Start by defining their position and relating to them, in order to sink them in your argument. They are always rules of thumb instead of facts, as they define an individual and help determine their self-identity and what will lead you to get to their commonplace.

"Anadiplosis: Builds one thought on top of another by taking the last word of a clause and using it to begin the next clause." This appeals to logic, is a great argument strategy.

Rebuttal through commonplace is most effective, because when you walk away vehemently from the commonplace, there's no ground for persuasion left.