Of "Mere Rhetoric"

I recall some years ago reading an essay by a Professor of English who lamented that the word "rhetoric" is so commonly, indeed usually, understood not as the study of the principles and rules of effective and typically persuasive oral and/or written communication, but rather, as Oxford Languages puts it, "language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content."

I agreed with that Professor that the latter is indeed the common understanding, and that this case of affairs means an impoverishment of the term which helps close our minds to an important area of human endeavor--one with which, for whatever it is worth, I have personally had to do for a very long time as not just a writer, but a composition instructor. Still, he struck me as exceedingly, depressingly, oblivious to the reasons why we ended up in that situation--our living in a society that devalues verbal communication and its study, and a commercial culture and a political culture which through their crassness and viciousness foster only cynicism about what people say, reducing the consideration of "rhetoric" to sneering at "mere rhetoric," such that the common understanding can scarcely be any other than what he regretted its being.