Zenophobia: Fear of an open space in your knowledge

It sucks to suck, but it's even worse to be a suck-up. Or that's what I used to think until I read Chapter 15. If your rhetorical skills reach certain level, you can turn a rebel into a suck-up. There's only one way to protect yourself from the benefits (or evils) or rhetoric: education.

It's like taking a quiz without studying, it's highly improbable you pass the exam if you haven't studied or at least heard a little about the topic. Same thing with rhetoric. There are many people and companies ready to trick you with their fallacious arguments. Don't be alarmed, knowing about the topic will surely aid you.

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Following what Mr. Tangen does in class, I read the maxim at the beginning of the chapter. It reads:

Rhetoric is an open palm, dialect is a closed fist. 
                                                                - Zeno

I tried to close read it but all my ideas were vague, but it seems they were closer to the correct answer than I thought. On page 159, Heinrichs writes on how he "loves rhetoric's lack of rules." This lack of rules is represented by an open palm while dialect, with grammar, spelling, and its other categories in which one could screw up, is shown as a closed fist. Makes sense. If I were this Zeno, I'd have used other objects. One could consider Heinrichs used Zeno's maxim since, as I just discovered, he's a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and the creator of dialect. These two titans just collided.