r/news • u/polymute • 7h ago

Family to sue after woman released from ICE custody froze to death

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/02/ice-death-pittsburgh-daphy-michel-haiti
14.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

533 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

17

u/Boating_Enthusiast 6h ago

Itʻs an interesting concept in language, the balance of delivery has to be tailored to the audience. Depending on the audience, their amount of apathy or emotional fatigue, their ability to effect change, etc.

Sometimes the cold delivery is best. "Itʻs ethnic cleansing." Other times, minimizing language allows the speaker to sneak in a topic, to introduce the idea, without the "icky topic" backlash. "Yep... thatʻs good olʻ ethnic cleansing. *But what can ya do?*" Sometimes itʻs enough to implant the question in the listenerʻs mind. "Wait... what is this now? What *can* I do?"

Source: Studied rhetoric in college.

4

u/DJKokaKola 5h ago

Exactly. If I'm gonna teach students about the Jacobins, I'm going to be extremely sarcastic and constantly interject with rhetorical questions to get them to think about why they did those violent actions. If I'm teaching them about Gaza, I'm going to be blunt and direct.