Fallacies In Political Arguments

During the second Presidential Debate, which was televised on October 9, 2016, I was able to detect many logical fallacies within the arguments of both candidates. For example, when Donald Trump was first asked about the controversial tape that contained footage of him disrespecting and admitting to sexually assaulting women, he avoided this question by attempting to divert attention from this issue. Instead of concretely answering the question, Donald Trump briefly apologized, and then blatantly attempted to ignore the issue by talking about Isis “chopping people’s heads,” and randomly describing all the horrid things that Isis is doing. This logical fallacy is characterized as “Red Herring,” which

Rhetorical fallacies are “errors and manipulation of rhetoric and logical thinking,” as defined by informationisbeautiful.net. Rhetorical fallacies such as affirming the consequent, appeal to pity, and undistributed middle, can be seen in any type of debate, or conversation. Rhetorical fallacies are very apparent in politic related public speaking, as I have observed. This paper will examine three videos from the Meet the Press series and the rhetorical fallacies I identified in these three videos.

This week both the NPR podcast, Political Discourse, and the summary of, The Moral Order of the Suburb discuss social distance and discourse. The podcast focuses more on sensationalizing political comments and opinions, while summary discusses the prevalent idea of moral minimalism in suburban life.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump, has used rhetorical fallacious tactics, to persuade his audience into voting for him. Fallacies may exploit emotional triggers in the listener, or take advantage of social relationships between people.

First I used Fallacies in the Debate: Hillary Clinton video on YouTube and she used red herring. Red herring is responding to an issue with an irrelevant argument meant to distract. The way she uses red herring is when the guy on the left of the screen says that governor Webb said she has never used military force in Libya and that the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi was inevitable. He also asked her if she should have seen that attack coming. She responded by saying, that we had a murderous dictator Qaddafi has apparently killed many Americans.

Presidential campaigns often thrive on fallacies. Trump is a perfect example of this, but is not the only one. Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Ben Carson, etc. Marco Rubio’s campaign, in particular, relies on a overly sentimental appeals as well as combination of fallacies resulting in a scare tactic.

Have you ever wondered if something is actually making you genuinely laugh or if it is just always laughed at so you feel like you must laugh at at? Sometimes people are so accustomed to the things around them that they are just going through the motions. Now fallacies are common errors within reasoning that will ruin the logic of your argument. They can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim. Have you ever jumped on the band wagon about something? Whether it be sports, an argument, or even bickering with a loved one. You side with someone even though you may not have all of the knowledge you should have befor putting up a fight.

The author makes several main claims throughout his articles such as, “national news stories are virtually never done on permit holders stopping mass public shootings,” and “the proposals put forward by gun control advocates wouldn’t have stopped this attack.” The columnist firmly believes in the power of the second amendment and as such, he wants to limit the amount of new laws that control how much the people can hold and use weapons. The claims listed are claims of fact and policy respectively. He gives several examples of how these different prevented mass shootings were not widely advertised and how the ones that were not stopped were all over news stations to convince people that guns are not helping the common people. The author then proposes that the changes that gun control advocates propose will not make a difference and begins to give reasons why which makes this a claim of policy. He says that making a change will not make any change so the laws should be left the same as they are now, or they should be more inclusive to allow more people to carry a concealed weapon.

A fallacy, by definition, is an argument that uses poor reasoning. Before one uses a fallacy, it’s important to have full understanding or else you risk losing your whole ethos aspect of your argument. Heinrichs gives three important parts to detecting fallacies. “All you have to do is look for a bad proof, the wrong number of choices, or a disconnect between the proof and the conclusion.” (Heinrichs 146)

 How does your essay challenge something about the way most people think about this topic?

1. One of the main arguments of the debate was situated against inventive and the ways it presented itself in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. For example the proposition said that Clinton’s background was a good indicator of her future decisions and that inventive is based off of situated. The opposition rebuttal included the argument that situated is only a platform and the way she speaks now and the narrative that is created is more important is current predicament of the race. The also debated on party allegiance and the factors that play into that. The proposition argued that depending on your political party, you bring different situated ethos while the opposition debated that especially in this election, using examples of the split Republican

In 2004 the United States of America held a presidential election as it does every four years. Throughout the process, from primary to convention, from the debates to Election Day, both the candidates and the media relied on rhetoric to influence the thoughts of the electorate. Because of the close results of the 2000 election and the bitter court battle that followed, the rhetoric of the campaigns of both major candidates in 2004 was stronger and more focused than before. To show the uses of this rhetoric and its effects on the public through the media, several topics are discussed within. First, the language used by the candidates, followed by a discussion of the political conventions and a look at the

In the United States, the medical and pharmaceutical industries have the greatest technology and professional medical services in the world. As a result, the cost of medical care is higher than the other countries. With that said, due to ever increasing costs, healthcare reform has been an issue for the past two decades. In order to lower the cost of healthcare, President Obama introduced revolutionary changes. ObamaCare is the unofficial name for The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a health reform law signed on March 23, 2010 by President Barack Obama (DeMichele). According to ObamaCare, “the Affordable Care Act does lots of important things including: offering Americans a number of new benefits, rights, and protections in regards to their healthcare; setting up a Health Insurance Marketplace where Americans can purchase federally regulated and subsidized health insurance during open enrollment; requiring most people to have coverage beginning in 2014 in order to get an exemption, or pay a penalty” (DeMichele). Since the ObamaCare started, many conservative politicians and Obama haters tried to challenge the ObamaCare because they assume the law takes advantage of tax payers. On the other hand, some politicians think President Obama starts a new era of health care. On June 25, 2015, the Supreme Court rejected another challenge in the case of “King vs. Burwell”. The justices voted 6-3 that the IRS can continue

For this week’s discussion about fallacies I chose to do mine on Slippery Slope fallacies. The reason why I chose this one is because while I was trying to think of which one to pick I had the tv on and a commercial for Direct TV came on and it was an old commercial they have used in the pass and I realized that this one would be a good one to pick. The commercial states why you shouldn’t have unreliable cable because if you do then you decide to do something else which causes a domino effect of unlucky, horrific events. For the commercial I picked the events that happen to the man was getting upset because of the service so he smacks his chair. Then his daughter sees it and does what he does at school and get kicked out, and when she gets

"You don 't get the chance to make America great by getting rid of everything that made America great,” Stated by Hillary Clinton during her campaign rally in St. Louis, Missouri to attack candidate Donald Trump from his previous diverse rhetoric. Political Rhetoric has been very popular in today’s society. Politics use this as a platform to criticize other candidates about important points that are essential to the United States and its citizens. Not only does others believe that political rhetoric is out of control but it is a negative form of art. During election time, the media and the internet are critical for candidates because it gives them easy access to the younger audience. Although social media is enormous in today’s society, this is the best way for young voters to make their voices heard. Scott Keeter a research analyst and exit poll analyst for NBS News stated that “Young voters have given the Democratic Party a majority of their votes, and for all three cycles they have been the party’s most supportive age group” (Keeter, 1). According to U.S. Census Bureau over the course of time the rate of younger voters “Dropped from 50.9% percent in 1964 to 38.0 percent in 2012” (U.S. Census Bureau, 2).However, the media continue to evolve with modern society. I believe that rhetoric such as visual political rhetoric helps the youth to get more involved with the political arguments while being educated and entertained at the same time.