Archive:Andrew Hester/On Rhetoric

By Andrew Hester, fourth Minor Executive, Head of the Treasury , Sophomore Executive

January 1st, 2013

Debates, that’s how laws and amendments are passed within any government from the United States Congress to the British Parliament and even our own executive and administrative branches. Everything from the Administrative Code to the Weapons Exchange Prevention Act have had been debated within the Executive Branch, however not all of it could be considered an actual debate, at least by myself.

When I think of a debate I think of statistics, like numbers for an economy measuring graphs, tables, pie charts, etc, historical facts, solid evidence that can prove or disprove an idea. I do not consider it an accurate debate if one of these is a used, more like an emotional debate. Take the tax code debates, the key players being Stavrok, Nathan and myself being for, versus Arnold mainly. Four weeks all we got from Arnold was as simple “no” followed by claims that it would go against Zerouh’s wishes, it would “damage” the economy… only towards the very end ways any kind of evidence shown.

The use of rhetoric in a debate rather than emotional appeal, to me, represents the intelligence in what the Triumvirate stands for. Moving away from the traditional emotional appeasing that modern-day politicians use in real world politics, like within the United States people seeking reelection will use emotional appeal rather than rhetoric to prove themselves correct and disprove their opponents. Even now after the tax code we see another set of debates occurring, or more like emotional rejection mainly on the part of the Progressive Party, much like the Establishment Party’s emotional rejection of the tax code, towards increasing the power of the Major Executive. Even so much to the point of both parties on numerous occasions trying to revoke the other side’s main law, PEACE Act being the Progressive’s and the GUARD Act being the Establishment’s. And also the Establishment Party’s attempts to move the triumvirate away from RuneScape, despite claims that if we gained one fairly large clan of around 10 to 25 people that can almost double our current population.

Some within the Establishment Party claim that the Progressive’s PEACE Act is a failed cause because it hasn’t gotten the triumvirate anything that was meant to send out for, such as new members, new alliances and stopping international crime. Whereas Ehyta and myself both know that this is a long-term law, something we suspect people’s attention span fail to grasp and only see the short-term gains. Then there are those who claim that the GUARD Act gives the Major Executive too much power, despite the fact that Ehyta did everything that the GUARD Act dictates during the Countdown Crisis, and now are staunchly opposed to giving any more power to the Major Executive.

The concept of the 12 person limit for the Executive Branch working together is a nice idea, however in practice as we’ve seen during the Tax Code we’ve seen the worst in the branch, which proves the GUARD in that we place our trust in the Major Executive to make the hard decisions rather than wait for 12 people to decide.

As we can see through this brief history of debates since I came into office as Head of the Treasury on May 6, 2012 with these last two issues being within the last two months with exception to the GUARD Act, there is still room for improvement amongst ourselves as politicians. We need to stop trying to grab emotional appeal and use more rhetoric, by using rhetoric we can back our claims with a stronger foundation and ensure that the opposing side understands where were coming from and why, and why our reasons for proposing what we propose should occur. We should propose things just to appear better than our peers in the Executive and Administrative Branches and shoot down ideas our opponents propose just because they either proposed it or because by doing so we look better, we should propose things that better the Triumvirate as a whole, with the tax code we better the Triumvirate by closing the deficit we currently have while ensuring that the money flows in the economy from one hand to another, with the GUARD Act we ensure that should an emergency occur we can look to the Major Executive for direction, with the PEACE Act we ensure that the Triumvirate is known throughout the international community.

I foresee a future where we don’t stop using emotional appeal we’ll end up like the United States Congress at the end of 2012 where they can agree to the so-called “fiscal cliff” till literally the last day of the year which was the deadline, will eventually resort to underhanded tactics to show our political opponents are wrong. If we use more rhetoric and if we all listen to what each side has to say we not only better ourselves as politicians but we also better the Triumvirate that we serve.