applebaum rhetoric essay

Applebaum Essay Anne Applebaum, an American Jewish journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has written extensively about communism, the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe, and about foreign affairs for the Washington Post. In one article Applebaum wrote for the Washington Post, she discusses the need to find new energy sources and her views against the expansion of nuclear power. Although Applebaum is an acclaimed writer, her argument against nuclear energy in “If the Japanese can’t build a safe reactor, who can?” is less than effective due to the large dependence on unsupported, bias and seemingly counteractive claims and the emotions of the reader, leaving the reader entertained, but not fully convinced. Throughout her entire article, Applebaum passes excessively opinionated statements off as facts. She describes Japan as “the only country in the world to have experienced true nuclear catastrophe”, giving the Japanese more of an incentive to build a safer nuclear plant. Applebaum completely disregards all other nuclear disasters to devastate the world, like Chernobyl, which took the lives of an estimated 40,000 people. When compared to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s damage, resulting in no immediate deaths, Applebaum’s claim is reduced to a disgusting overstatement. This is because it ignores a horrible event, caused by an actual malfunction in a nuclear power system that killed thousands of people and lead to the displacement of many more due to radiation levels, yet offers the utmost concern for the nuclear aftermath of a natural disaster that killed zero people. The earthquake in Japan was a tragedy, however Japan cannot be considered the pioneers of nuclear disaster. Applebaum also, at times, contradicts herself. Earlier in her article, Applebaum claims that Japan was “…the only country in the world to have experienced true nuclear catastrophe…” she later counteracts this when she states that “If there