McAvoy's Statements on What Makes America the Best Country
Is America the greatest country in the world? This essay will try to answer this question by analysing how Will McAvoy, a news anchorman, discusses what makes America the greatest country on Earth.
Seated to his left, the liberal participant offers a simplistic answer while on his right, the conservative participant recites his redundant response. McAvoy, on the other hand, sidesteps answering altogether until, at the goading of the moderator and of his own conscience, he erupts with an angry outburst arguing that America is not, in fact, the greatest country. While reflecting on the glories of America’s past, McAvoy uses a sarcastic and scornful tone to emphasize the country’s current state of decline. Incorporating harsh language choices, McAvoy uses repetition, bold logical appeals, and juxtaposition to emphasize how irrational it is to assume America’s global dominance as a nation defined by greatness.
First of all, McAvoy opens and closes his speech by directly refuting of the assumption of the question itself. While the other participants are quick to respond with platitude and forgettable responses, McAvoy openly contradicts the question by repeating that America is ‘’not the greatest country’’. Using simple and direct language allows McAvoy’s response to stand out among the other participating speakers, emphasizing his position that those who assume America is the greatest country on Earth believe in a fantasy. By employing repetition at the end of his speech, McAvoy forces the audience to recognize their own participation in making false assumptions about American society.
Second, McAvoy enumerates many unflattering facts and statistics about modern-day America to appeal to the audience’s sense of logic. When addressing the issue of freedom, McAvoy lists, ‘’Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom’’. This strategy clarifies the fact that freedom alone cannot qualify America as the greatest nation on the planet. Continuing with this strategy, McAvoy’s use of enumeration offers a plethora of statistics demonstrating America’s inferior global status, including performance in core academic subjects among many others. By incorporating a barrage of reasons why America cannot be labeled as ‘’the greatest country on Earth’’, McAvoy effectively provides many counterexamples to negate what many Americans assume to be true. As a result, the audience members are left to question their own perceptions of America’s global dominance.
Finally, McAvoy closes his speech by using juxtaposition to glorify America’s noble past with the current state of decadence. Much of this passage is structured according to a ‘’We used to…., but now we… ‘’ pattern. For example, McAvoy admonishes, ‘’We waged wars on poverty, not poor people’’, and ‘’we aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it’’. These examples not only reflect on traditional American ideals, but also contrast them with the realities of modern American life. While simultaneously highlighting the numerous important achievements of America’s past alongside examples of political squabbling and misguided policies of current society, McAvoy appeals to the audience’s sense of nostalgia and tradition in order to emphasize his point that America has fallen significantly in global status.
In summary, Will McAvoy effectively blends many rhetorical strategies, including repetition, appeals to logic, and juxtaposition, to contradict that America is the greatest country on Earth. He leaves his audience with a sense of shame that hopefully may become a call to action to rediscover the passion, nobility, and dignity of traditional American politics and society.
