Assignment 2?

I'm confused about assignment #2 on the syllabus. I thought we were supposed to be doing a paper on the questions posed but maybe we're supposed to be doing a blog so I guess it's better to be safe than sorry. I actually found this section of the reading interesting and easy to understand. I especially liked the line about coercion where Ramage says "It turns 'could' into 'must' or 'should' or 'did' without acknowledging its sleight of hand" (74) Ramage describes coercion as a gunman that gives you a very limited choice, "either give me your money or you're dead." The art of coercion is to give a person a limited number of undesired options so doing what you want seems to be their only choice. I really liked how Ramage described this as the "fear-based" argument (74). I also found the sidebars about Bush interesting and they really helped to drive the points Ramage was trying to make home.
For my paper I would love to focus on idea of what makes a speaker persuasive. I need to do a lot more research and I'm not sure exactly what points I want to emphasize. However I've always found it interesting that throughout history leaders such as Hitler could convince their people to commit such horrible atrocities without the blink of an eye, so why not write a paper about it.