And appeal to probability, appeal to consequences and fallacy of the undistributed middle.. :)

Yuck. Yes, I must really resist the temptation to comment after all nighters. Manipulation == psychopathy, is a bit much.

I too assert however that manipulating the audience in spite of appealing to reason is unethical, and that some sort of notion that we should practice manipulation so as to strengthen ourselves to it is rubbish, if we consider manipulation to be unethical in the first place. Hence, if it's beneath us, even if using manipulation made us better at persuasion through appeals to ethos and pathos, or at least better apt at detecting and exposing manipulation, what what would be the point after having compromised our own values in the first place?