America Needs Its Nerds

American culture has evolved, and Society tends to ostracize people for their intelligence, and our culture has been giving these intellectuals derogatory names like nerd and geek. Leonid Fridman believes that these anti- intellectual values that pervade our society must be fought and should stop for the sake of America. The author supports this position in the passage “America Needs It’s Nerds” through the use of rhetoric by giving definitions of terms such as geek, offering comparisons through juxtaposition, adding a tone shift, and posing rhetorical questions to the reader.

The author begins by giving the definition of a geek and how it has been portrayed wrong the whole time. The correct definition of geek is “a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads of live chickens”, but society has been incorrectly using this term. Society inclines to call people that are academically serious and highly value education names like nerd and geek. The author uses juxtaposition to compare Geeks to circus side-show freaks by introducing the correct definition of a geek and how it has been used erroneously in our culture. Our society has been associating geeks with freaks for many years because they simply do not understand people that are scholastically gifted. The author uses the rhetorical device of juxtaposition to simply demonstrate how mistaken our civilization is in comparing a freak biting off a head of a live chicken to a person who is dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. The author also compares an intellectual to a “freak” to illustrate the disproportionately negative meaning of the term “geek”, while the actual definition of geek is far more negative than the common, everyday usage of the word. Later in the pas...

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...c achievement over physical prowess”. Rhetorical questioning and Anaphora both help Fridman prove his point because they directly stress the need for anti- intellectual values to be fought and academic achievement and intellectual ability be highlighted.

Fridman’s argument is extremely convincing in the proving his point through the use of drawing comparisons and juxtaposing them, adding a tone shift, and adding rhetorical questions that include anaphora to help emphasize his point in the passage. Leonid Fridman in “America Needs Its Nerds” reflects American ideological thinking in a harsh indifferent way. With the use of various rhetorical devices Leonid Fridman successfully develops his argument that for America’s sake, anti- intellectual values must be fought, and the need for America to reestablish its value system to remain a world- class power.