I Don't Care If It's a Logical Fallacy

Now that the holidays are over, I’m back to helping my youngest child, a high school junior, prepare for the SAT. Lately, we’ve been working on the SAT essay. All of my kids hated this. I hated helping them prepare. But with the fourth child, things have a hit a new low.

The essay topic today was “Does history repeat itself?” Then, there were two quotes that were supposed to inspire him to essay greatness. He wasn’t inspired. I should’ve known this by the grumbling and gnashing of teeth I overheard. But I ignored it. I shouldn’t have.

At twenty-five minutes after I handed him the essay topic, the timer rang. He handed me a succinct paragraph explaining why the topic was illogical. He examined the fallacies involved. The false terms that obscured that truth. Etc., etc.

When my husband Calvin got home from work, I handed him the essay. Before he read it, I explained that our son would get a zero on the essay section of the SAT. I said that our son needed an attitude adjustment. That he needed to learn to work within the system. My husband nodded gravely. Then, Cal read the essay. He doubled over in laughter. Literally. When he finished laughing, he said, “You know, this is great.”

I was not amused.

Appeal to Fear

Have you ever taken the time to participate in one of those political phone surveys? I usually don’t. I have too many things going on, someplace I needed to be or a child that needed me.  And so I always wondered how accurate those surveys were. After all, busy people didn’t have time.

But a month or two ago, on a quiet evening when everyone was gone, I got one of those phone calls. And instead of saying “no,” I thought that I’d like to have my voice heard. So I participated. And it started out normal enough. The first question was whether I approved of the way that the President was governing. Talk about your opened-end question. Um, on which issue? It seemed to be a popularity question. But that’s what politics has become. So I answered the question.

And after a couple more questions like that, things got a bit surreal. My favorite question (to the best of my ability to remember it) was “Don’t you think that it’s unfair that the city is forcing police officers who live outside the county to leave their vehicles at the county line?” Talk about your leading questions. Talk about swaying opinions by the way questions are phrased. I had a year of stats in college and my prof’s favorite exercise was to bring in front-page-of-the-newspaper scientific studies and show us why the results were meaningless because the statistical formulas used had no bearing on the studies’s data. While this wasn’t “scientific,” I’m sure he would have had a field day with this poll.

Again the pollster pushed me on the question. I said, “You know, I really don’t know enough about the issue to answer the question.” Nothing had been in the newspaper about the issue. As it turns out, the city no longer wants to pay for the gas, etc., for policemen who live outside of the county (it’s a large county) to drive their vehicles home. Now maybe there’s a good reason for them to drive their vehicles home, but I don’t know what it is. The police weren’t willing to make their case in the press. And I can certainly understand why the county doesn’t want to pay for the gas for a police officer who chooses to live a long way away. And unlike the mental image created by the pollster, there probably wouldn’t be scores of abandoned police cars lining the county line.

At the end of the poll, it was obvious that the police department and the mayor were skirmishing. Since then, it’s turned in a full-blown war. Nasty, name-calling billboards, where the police threaten that they won’t deal with gang violence unless the mayor gives them what they want. Um, hello, what happened to “Protect and Serve?” Maybe the police have a good reason for their anger, but punishing the citizens isn’t the way to go. And when the newspaper tried to talk to the police chief about the billboards, he refused to comment.

Perhaps someone needs a lesson in logic. My son Matthew is taking logic right now, and this whole fiasco had been an excellent example of ad hominen abusive, irrelevant goals and functions, and argumentum ad baculum (appeal to fear).

At this point, I’d really like the police chief and the mayor to write some editorials because I’d sure like to know what’s going on. In the meantime, Matt’s learning about politics and putting his logic skills to good use.