It is hard to tell that you are living in a weak house until there is a wolf to huff and puff and blow it all down. Under normal circumstances, when the air is still, the sky is clear, and the only animals trying to blow your house down are the occasional mouse or meerkat, it may seem that your decision to construct your abode using straw was not only economical but intelligent. But of course, as Chris Winters demonstrates in his article “The Coronavirus Outbreak Has Shown That Capitalism is Failing,” a system’s most significant flaws tend to show themselves not during times of calm but during times of crisis. Much like a house built of straw, an unregulated free market seems like a great idea when the forecast looks bright; however, as with most purist ideologies, capitalism does not hold up in practice when things like humans’ tendencies toward egotism and our fascination with the accumulation of wealth blind us from altruism. As the famous saying goes, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” so convincing any reader that capitalism is fallible is no easy feat for Winters. Having to fight against obstinacy motivated his decision to write this op-ed as a sort of roadmap that guides the reader from the straw ruins of the free market to the brick house that he believes is built from socialist policies.
Winters wrote this piece in three sections which is what led me to use the analogy of a roadmap. First, Winters gives context to the crisis and a reason to care about what he is saying; then, he highlights his similarities with the audience to build his credibility; and finally, he lays down the facts and leads the reader through his arguments. In a sense, the article acts as a tour around the traditional greek rhetorical triangle beginning by appealing to pathos, then ethos, then logos. Perhaps, the three sections of the piece are not quite as discrete or striated as I have made them out to be, but it is still a useful and accurate way of analyzing the overall trend and flow of Winters’ article.
To understand why Winter’s approach to writing an opinion piece is so practical, we first must understand the audience who will be reading it. Yes! Solutions Journalism, the publisher of the piece, can pretty clearly be labeled as a progressive media outlet just by looking at its primary tabs: social justice, environment, and democracy. Although it may be a bleak look at the world, humanity’s tendency towards echo chambers of confirmation bias means that the primary audience of this piece will be liberal readers. Having a sympathetic audience already makes getting the point across easier, but with a claim like “capitalism is failing”, Winters still has some work to do for even the most progressive westerners. Recognition of his target audience, however, informs many of his decisions about tone, word choice, and how to structure his argument around the evidence. To understand how, let us start with the beginning.
Why should anyone care about what he is saying? Since the media is so saturated with people treating coronavirus as only a nominal threat, Winters must begin his article by laying out what the pandemic’s current and future consequences could mean for the country. The introduction serves as a striking and emotionally enticing hook to grab the reader’s attention. In just the first paragraph, he enumerates several ongoing effects, such as “numerous small businesses… shuttering and laying off staff,” “a surge in unemployment compensation claims,” and “severe economic disruptions that are likely to be long-lasting” (Winters par. 1). By introducing his op-ed with the already countless tragedies and adverse repercussions of the crisis, Winters can convert even an apathetic audience to an attentive one. It will at least pique their interest enough to read the next paragraph: “if there’s ever been a time to radically change our social service policies, this is it” (Winters par. 2). The second paragraph introduces why Winters cares about the issue and primes the reader for what kind of paper they can expect. It is also a perfect example of a structural strategy that Winters employs throughout the piece: long contextual paragraphs then followed by a succinct, one or two-line paragraph. Returning to the roadmap analogy, these long paragraphs full of contextual evidence function as straight roads where the reader absorbs data, facts, and other information. Winters then steers the reader to another topic with a short, thought-provoking rhetorical question or statement such as “what can we do?” or “so instead we squandered our fiscal strength on cutting corporate taxes” (Winters par. 17, 24). These not only serve the stylistic purpose of transitioning between topics, but they offer occasional reminders of how the piece began: why should I care?
As the reader further delves into the article, they find themselves leaving the comfort and relative neutrality of the introduction, and Winters presents his true voice. The middle of his piece serves the role of appealing to ethos by strengthening the audience’s already majority sympathetic point of view. The credibility of an author can come in the form of demonstrating intellectual vitality or knowledge in a particular field, but Winters instead relies on the approach of establishing a common enemy with the audience, namely conservative politicians. This is accomplished primarily in the form of his accusatory and condescending tone which intimately follows every mention of the Trump administration or other republican lawmakers. If he were attempting to reach an antithetic audience, this method would only be effective in alienating his adversaries. However, since the intended audience is primarily congenial, Winters opts for likability over neutrality. He likens Trump to a toddler in how his administration “has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to enact the bare minimum of measures to contain the outbreak”; he labels him as the “most unqualified and unfit president in U.S. history”; and, he contrasts Dr. Fauci, “the lone sane voice in the administration,” with “Trump’s rosy (and blatantly false) claims” (Winters par. 10, 14, 27). The satirical attitude that Winters’ extreme diction portrays would not go over well with a Trump supporter, but for a like-minded reader, this criticism makes them more receptive to what the author has to say. Perhaps this is not morally beneficial for a constructive bipartisan discussion that minimizes confirmation bias, but I’m merely discussing the psychological effectivity and persuasiveness of appealing to the reader’s beliefs. Now that he has ensured his audience that he is on their team, he can begin laying out his arguments.
From the title of the article, the reader can surmise that Winters thinks capitalism is failing, but it is failing in reference to what? To republican politicians like “Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who suggested that seniors should be willing to sacrifice themselves for economic results,” capitalism is only failing because the government is interfering with it (Winters par. 16). However, Winters challenges the thought that capitalism and economic productivity should be our moral compass. In his eyes, capitalism is failing, and it should be failing because our moral obligation is not to the stock market, but to each other. Winters does not want to see the death of capitalism, but he recognizes that it does need some help. His op-ed resolves with what we can conclude from the coronavirus pandemic: that “if there’s ever been a sign that we need a national health care program, to provide paid sick leave for all working people, and to implement countless other protections for people who have been trampled by big business and their stand-ins in Congress, this is it” (Winters par. 29). The only thing we can logically learn from this past couple of months is that the capitalist ideal of competition is not an effective way to respond to a crisis. Capitalism is blind when it comes to anything besides maximizing capital, so human life is left by the roadside when all we care about is the economy. In the last sentence of the article, Winters asks the reader to make a choice: “Are we really 50 individual nations competing with each other to procure medical equipment? Or are we one nation, undivided?” (Winters par. 36). The question asks whether we prefer the federation or the union, but it serves more as an analogy to the parallel question of whether we do value capitalism over cooperation, money over life. This is the final destination of Winters’ roadmap, and it is a decision the reader must make alone, but the structure and rhetorical composition of the piece leads the reader to one logical conclusion.
Winters ultimately hopes to push his already liberal readers farther left. He expresses optimism that maybe “our current situation [will] open [Joe Biden’s] eyes to the need for a more socialist platform, such as the one that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has been pushing” (Winters par. 28). Beginning with the premise that “our deregulated capitalist society cannot protect the population during a national emergency,” Winters guides the reader to the logical conclusion that the neoliberal ideal of deregulation needs to be replaced if we care about more in this world than just money. Along the way, he uses various rhetorical strategies such as manipulating his tone, appealing to pathos, and using contextual evidence to keep the reader with him. However, Winters leaves the reader to face the most crucial question alone. He questions why we spend so much energy counting digits in our bank accounts when that only blinds us from the things that do genuinely count. It is challenging to hear that the roots of modern society are withering, which is why Winters’ article sets us out on a scavenger hunt where the treasure at the end is remembering our humanity. Upon finishing this five-minute read, you fall upon the paramount realization that you were not born a capitalist, you were born a human, and humans choose life.
Winters, C. (2020, March 26). Opinion: The Coronavirus Outbreak Has Shown That Capitalism Is Failing. Retrieved from https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2020/03/26/coronavirus-capitalism/