I have this poster on my wall at school.  I refer to it when I’m explaining the argument essay and also when I’m teaching satire.  I tell my students that they need to avoid logical fallacies in cogent arguments UNLESS they are using them for satirical effect.

I warn them that if they are using fallacies for satirical effect, they need to make the irony obvious otherwise their satire will backfire since it is so often hard to recognize in print.

Then came the 2016 Presidential Election, and I’m thinking I’m going to have to change my teaching.  I think the fallacy has BECOME the argument.

In the past, we would teach students to avoid these ideas because they are so easy to debunk.  But in this Presidential campaign this seems to be the modus operandi.

Remember this Direct TV ad?  If your cable goes out,  you’ll end up chasing butterflies and get killed by drug dealers?  Ridiculous, right?  It’s called a slippery slope.  Yet, we use politics to convince people if Trump gets elected,  it will be the new Holocaust and all Muslims will be sent to concentration camps.  If Hillary gets elected, nuclear war will begin.  People all over the interwebs argue this as if it’s a real thing!

And I can’t even START with the ad hominem attacks.  That’s when you attack the person and not the idea.  That never ends!   Donald Trump literally called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” in a Presidential debate… like that’s a thing?  Like his opinion is somehow a talking point?  What in the world?  Then we have ol’ Hill talking about the fact that the Trumpster insulted a Miss Universe winner.  Mean guy made fun of a Miss Universe contestant.  Are you kidding me?  That’s what we care about?

Then there’s the cherry picking.  That’s when you choose one thought,  one idea that suits your purposes, even if someone was talking about something entirely different.  These ideas are completely out of context. Let’s take Hill, the child rapist defender.  Yup, that’s right.  She had the gall to defend a child rapist.  Let’s forget the fact that she was a asked by a judge to do it and that she tried to turn it down.  Let’s forget about the fact that the American legal system says EVERYONE has a right to defense.  Let’s only talk about the part that best fits our argument.

And the Trumpeter has been a victim of this multiple times as well. Trump supported the war in Iraq and then LIED about it.  It’s clear!   He did it.  This “damning” quote was said to Howard Stern on a comedy radio show.  Yes, I’ve heard it, too.  Trump mumbles a non committal “Yeah, I guess so…”  in response to repeated questioning by Stern.  There is zero context given for this.  In a more blatant attack, the media claims Trump is lying when he said he never apologized to Melania for assaulting women because it didn’t happen.  This is followed up directly with a video of Melania saying “He apologized to me.”  What a liar Trump is, right?  EXCEPT… that’s NOT what he apologized for. He apologized for joking about sexually assaulting women… not for ACTUALLY assaulting them. (That’s a logical fallacy right there…from me… did you catch it?  That’s your tip off…  reductio ad absurdum.)

Their use of non sequitur is so rampant, I can’t even keep up. With my students, I refer to this as the “hey, look squirrel” form of argument.  I tell them that it doesn’t work…  I tell them that you have to address the question that has been asked of you.  Apparently, not, however.  Apparently it is completely appropriate when asked a question about sexual assault charges to say, “I’m more worried about 30,000 emails than I am about sexual assault charges.”  Ummmmm… what?  I just asked a question about sexual assault.  Why am I talking about emails?  And vice versa…

But you know what?  It’s working.  People are listening.  Voter registration is at an all time high in a lot of states.    People LOVE the logical fallacies.  Economics, individual rights, military action… those things are so very complicated…

…but “I know you are, but what am I…”  Yeah, we can all understand THAT.

In a world where people only read 140 characters at a time, watch a video, or look at a picture,  it’s not at all surprising that these little quips are substituting for argument.  In fact, the idea that most people read to this 723rd word or even clicked on something with lots of words to read it is laughable.

Catch the logical fallacy in my last statement, there, did ya?  You can join me in playing the “find the logical fallacy” game…

or maybe it’s time for me to join them in teaching argument nouveau.