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Week 9

Communication Fallacies: How Politicians Manipulate Logic


In Ed Rogers' Washington Post opinion piece "Democrats' frightening embrace of socialism", I discovered several textbook communication fallacies that undermine his argument. 

Slippery Slope Fallacy

Rogers claims a guaranteed monthly stipend would inevitably lead to ever-increasing payments in each election cycle:

"A guaranteed monthly stipend would become the floor. And every subsequent election would be a referendum on whether voters want to support the candidate promising the larger pay raise from Washington."

Our lecture explains this fallacy assumes "once a course of action is taken, other unavoidable events will inevitably occur" - but we can't actually predict the future with such certainty.

Either/Or Fallacy (False Dilemma)

Rogers presents an overly simplified choice:

"It certainly means every Democrat running for president in 2020 will be asked if they favor socialism or capitalism."

This creates a false dilemma by ignoring the spectrum of mixed economic systems. The fallacy is problematic because "if you don't know what all of the options are, you can't choose the best one," per our lecture.

Hasty Generalization

Rogers characterizes an entire generation based on limited evidence:

"According to the 2017 YouGov-Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Report on U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, more millennials would prefer to live in socialist countries than they would in capitalist countries."

This fallacy occurs when taking one or two instances and drawing broad conclusions without sufficient evidence.

Understanding these fallacies has reminded me about paying attention more to logic when I consume political media. As Crusius and Channell explain in our textbook, effective arguments require "sound warrants that connect the reasons and evidence to the claim" (42). When these connections fail, as in Rogers' article, the entire argument becomes suspect.


References

Crusius, T. W., & Channell, C. E. (2016). Analyzing Arguments: The Toulmin Method. In The Aims of Argument: A Text and Reader (8th ed., pp. 39-49). McGraw-Hill Education.

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