Election year entertainment: fun finding fallacies

Physician Executive,  May-June, 2008  by Richard Thompson

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Like a teenage hot-shot racing down the road in his pickup truck with an angry father in hot pursuit, we usually act according to what we feel instead of stopping to think. professional political propagandists depend on this human characteristic.

Elections pretend to be about logical discussions of important issues, but they are not. Winning an election actually depends on arousing voter's emotions. On primary election day in New Hampshire this year, Barak Obama was expected to defeat Hillary Clinton, perhaps in a landslide.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

At the last minute, both Bill and Hillary Clinton apparently connected with voters by making effective emotional appeals. Senator Clinton won a race that will long be remembered as an upset.

Is appealing to voter emotion rather than sticking to the issues ethical electioneering? How do we decide? That is, what ethical principles apply here, and how do they apply?

Tell the truth, but not the whole truth

At the bottom line, ethics is the willful, self-imposed restraint that makes society possible. Academicians will forever argue about which ethical principle contributes most to keeping civilization civilized, and about whether or not any ethical principle or behavioral guideline is truly absolute.

However, all but the most stubborn, cynical, and contrarian intellectual combatants agree on two points:

1. Truth-telling is a necessary value if a society's moral system is to be complete.

2. Logical thinking is necessary to distinguish truth from questionable claims on one hand, and mistaken or obsolete notions on the other.

Indeed, ethics without truth telling and critical thinking would be like a computer with no operating system on it that comes without a power cord.

We are not talking here about "seeking truth," which is an idealistic philosophical exercise. Rather, we are talking about an unwillingness to deceive. Truth-telling is a linchpin of civilized society because without it there can be no trust, and without trust there can be neither meaningful personal relationships nor sustained success and profitability in business. However, contrary to traditional ethical thought and George Washington's upbringing, even truth-telling is not an absolute moral value. "Honey, how do you like my new hairdo?" No good is done by telling the truth. "Not much, because it makes you look older."

And what about one of our most popular spectator sports, football? 1 once saw a team penalized 15 yards for "deception." That's extremely unusual, because the avowed purpose of a well-designed and well-executed football play is to deceive the defense, causing them to misdirect their efforts.

Furthermore, a reasonable degree of deception is an honored, accepted part of advertising. So most people would agree that a reasonable degree of deception is still within the range of acceptable ethical behavior.

Politics and ethics

Enter the subject of political campaigns. Perhaps you have noticed that electioneering is not an attempt to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about either one's own candidate or the opposition.

No one can get elected to public office without telling voters what they want to hear, and voters often do not want to hear the truth. Thus, no one can get elected to public office, at least at the state and federal level, without deceiving or at least distracting voters. And appealing to our emotions is the best way to deceive and distract us.

So now we can see clearly the importance of logical thinking. Since a reasonable degree of deception in electioneering is no more unethical than a good football play, we must stay on our intellectual toes to avoid being deceived to the point of being played for fools.

By the way, stop calling politicians liars. The best politicians do not lie to us. Rather, they mislead us. "I understand your concern about this negative ad and believe me if I find out that one of my people is responsible, then I will immediately take appropriate action!" The candidate, Republican or Democrat, is telling the truth. Therefore, you won't get anywhere calling the candidate a liar.

However, logical thinkers have some questions to ask because they recognize that this isn't the whole truth. This is only a half truth.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

That is, we are led to think. "If these allegations are right, then he's going to fire the culprit." But did the candidate say anything about firing anybody? What if the candidate is choosing words very carefully to avoid lying?

Popular propaganda tools

The main tools used by propagandists to deceive, mislead, and distract us are the fallacies. A fallacy is a misleading, often purposely deceptive flawed argument that masquerades as critical thinking but is really an appeal to strong emotions such as anger, pride, fear, patriotism and hatred.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

People who use fallacies do not convince us that they are correct. Rather, they fool us into thinking that they are correct. That is why getting someone to believe a fallacious argument is known as playing him or her for a fool.