Do I like that I ask myself questions out loud as rhetorical device? No. But do I do it anyway? Yes. Am I trying to stop? Absolutely.

Among the many verbal and rhetorical ticks I’ve tried to fix in myself – including but not limited to the overuse of “um,” an overreliance on “interesting…” when I don’t have something more specific to say, and the tortured locutional use of double negatives (“It’s not unremarkable to me that…”) – the use of self-directed questions to make a point is rapidly becoming public enemy number 1 in the abstract citizen world.

A lot of people use this, I think, because it allows them to set up their own microterms after positing a macro rhetorical strawman. In some cases, the purpose of the sequence is to illustrate that the microterm is a lot less extreme than the macroterm. For example:

Am I for the indiscriminate euthanizing of Rottweiler puppies? Absolutely not. Would I support some measures to identify and track violent dogs and keep them away from children and the elderly? Sure, if it can be done in a minimally invasive way. And would I support taxing all Rottweiler owners to pay for a testing program that? Hell yes I would.

But really, it’s not even that these questions create a dialogue that’s intellectually dishonest or that is manipulative. It’s just…inefficient and inartful. And pedantic. We’re not in a classroom, and I don’t need to run anyone through exercises. Whatever happened to being able to directly express ambivalence or caveats? I’m not for this idea, but I think there is merit to a portion of the underlying argument. Or, I’m for this in principle, but oftentimes good ideas in this area don’t get successfully translated into practice.

Since when do I need every thought to be broken up into a Q and A format? The Ithaca chapter of Ulysses notwithstanding, I think we would all do well to express our ideas as directly as possible, and let questions arise naturally as the result of statements we’ve made, rather than injecting them into our monologues as a preemptive measure to frame the discussion.

Having said all this, will I probably still fall off the bandwagon? You bet. Will I judge you if you fall off too? Absolutely not.