Flemings City Of Rhetoric Summary

In Flemings City of Rhetoric, he attempts to explain how the geographic landscape impacts and influences us to shape our political beliefs and who we are as people. Fleming first focuses on the ways political ideology developed and how those ideologies effect our relationships. Our political beliefs “group” us together (Fleming, 22). It makes sense. Many of the friend’s people make have similar ideologies, beliefs, values, and morals. That’s simple human nature. People congregate where they feel comfortable, be it political expression, or the color of one’s skin. Now, this ties deeper into Flemings argument, that people congregate where they feel comfortable and in effect they create the environment around them; thus that environment adopts those ideologies and perpetuates it (Fleming, 23). Look at your own life. Where you grew up, the people that surrounded you in your childhood, the socio-economic status of your municipality, and even your vicinity to a major city have all influenced who you are drastically. If you happened to have been born in a different place, …show more content…
Americans are brought up with a defined sense of what is it to be “American”. For example, every American knows what the “American Dream” is, but to each American it is different. But why? As Fleming finds, the interpersonal space that municipalities force upon us help to define our values because this interpersonal space coerces us to interact with one another (Fleming, 29) More importantly, the characteristics of the specific municipality influence the type of people that derive from there. Simply put, rich people live with other rich people and poor people live with other poor people (Fleming, 33). Due to this profound distinction, the values found in these communities are vastly different from one another, shaping and influencing the people who come from these