Category: Commentary (Page 1 of 6)

Everyone loses when MAGA Republicans get their way

September 27, 2023 / CounterPoint

Freedom Caucus, US House, GOP Right Wing, speaker of the house, political cartoon

What you need to know

Now you might be thinking: Didn’t we just go through this whole cycle a few months ago? The brinksmanship, the urgent warnings, the crisis over government funding? Why on earth is this happening again?

The short answer: Because Republicans have handed the car keys to the most extreme members of their caucus and they’re driving us all off a cliff.

The long answer: The May default crisis was resolved in the nick of time with a deal between President Biden and Kevin McCarthy. That deal set top-line spending levels for the coming year’s budget.

Extreme MAGA Republicans have spent the last several months agitating against the deal. Their demands are wide-ranging and radical. They want dramatic cuts to federal programs. They want to defund the DOJ and aid to Ukraine. They want to restrict access to medication abortion. They want drastic cuts to social safety net programs. In short, they want to move the goalposts for the budget process into right-wing fantasy land. As a result, Republican House members are currently literally unable to agree with each other on how to fund the federal government.

Now, this would not be a problem if Kevin McCarthy was willing to ignore the MAGA caucus. Because he does have enough votes in the House to pass the original deal. It’s just that he’d need Democratic votes to do it. And he’s committed to his caucus that he won’t pass a funding bill unless it can pass with only Republican votes.

US government shutdown: What is it and who would be affected?

This crisis could also be resolved if even a handful of Republicans were willing to go against their party and sign a discharge petition to allow Democrats to bring a bipartisan bill to the floor. A discharge petition is a tactic that allows a majority of Congress members to override the Speaker and put a bill on the floor. Plenty of Republicans (especially the ones who are worried about their re-elections, like the Unrepresentatives) are giving quotes about being frustrated, or how they wish their party would get its act together. Every time you hear that, just remember: it would take 6 Republicans signing a discharge petition to allow Democrats to bring a bipartisan bill to the floor. If your representative isn’t willing to do this, then their words are meaningless.

It’s common for the media to frame shutdowns as a “both sides” issue. But let’s be clear: This is not a situation where “Washington is broken” or “the two sides can’t work it out.” The deal has been reached. The votes for the deal are there. That’s not the problem. The problem is that Republicans, under pressure from their most extreme MAGA members, have unilaterally abandoned the deal. They would rather shut the government down than simply work with Democrats to pass the budget deal they already agreed to.

Don’t just take our word for it — here’s the same point from an unlikely source:

Said arsonist Matt Gaetz, “We cannot blame the Democrats for having not done our job to comply with the coalition agreement that we made at the beginning of the year. That is the fault of the Speaker.”

All of this would be comical if there weren’t such awful consequences for the rest of us. The pain of a government shutdown is enormous. Essential services for seniors, working families, the military, and first responders are disrupted. Kids go hungry because programs like WIC and SNAP lose funding. Disaster relief funding — like money for the survivors of the Maui fires — is delayed or cut. And crucial government functions like food safety inspections and air travel oversight risk disruption.

Everyone loses when MAGA Republicans get their way.

OK, so what do we do about it?

There are two things we need to do here:

First, we need to get out of this mess without rewarding Republicans’ terrible behavior. If you’ve got a Democratic representative, you should be telling them to stand strong. If you’ve got a Republican representative, you should be putting the heat on them — especially if you’ve got a Republican who represents a flippable district, or who’s in principle opposed to their party’s shenanigans.

Second, if a shutdown does occur, we need to make sure that the public understands that it’s a product of Republican extremism and dysfunction. Republicans are doing something very unpopular (shutting down the government) to try to get something else that’s also very unpopular (cuts to essential programs for families, seniors, and more). They need to pay a political price for it. Fortunately, we’ve got a plan for that – an entire campaign. Join our Unrepresentatives Project and help us hold the most vulnerable Republicans accountable.

The reality is that for these folks, the election season has already started. If this shutdown drags on, we’ve got to make sure they see consequences for it.

In solidarity,
Leah Greenberg
Co-founder and Co-Executive Director, of Indivisible

The Crisis of Monopoly

September 24, 2023 / CounterPoint

Cell phone service that costs $15 a month in France or $12 a month in Australia bills out at an average of $61.85 per month in the United States. High-speed broadband that’s a bit over $31 a month in France or $36 in Germany (for higher speeds and better reliability than almost anywhere in the United States) averages nearly $70 per month in the US. Similar metrics are found with pharmaceuticals, airfares, and medical costs, among dozens of other product and service categories. Why is this? Monopoly.

The average American family pays an annual “monopoly tax”—in additional costs for pretty much everything—of around $5,000, according to economist Thomas Philippon. And things are steadily getting worse as monopolistic concentrations continue to tighten their grip on every American industry from banking to telecom to food.

Monopoly (using the term in its broadest sense, to include everything from a single company controlling a market to a half dozen companies working in a cartel-like fashion) is why working people’s pay hasn’t gone up since 1982 when President Ronald Reagan’s Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice stopped enforcing the anti-monopoly laws. The rich have gotten fabulously richer since then. Consumers, when harmed or ripped off, have largely been stripped of their legal powers to hold businesses accountable. America now lags behind other countries in innovation, which is why (as one small example) we have the highest pharmaceutical and healthcare costs in the world.

The crisis of corruption is deep and covers every known strain from political, media, business, sexual, moral, and economic. Whatever particular variant is eroding the American way of life, the common denominator is that all serve as a marker of collapse, decay, and rot within the systems, institutions, and organizations that are vital to the sustainment of American society. ~Steve Schmidt

Our streets are filled with guns, our schools have been stripped of books and school supplies, and our food is so deficient in nutrients (vegetables today have about half the nutrients they did in 1950) that we are experiencing a malnutrition-induced obesity epidemic.

Because of monopolies, billionaires pay lower tax rates than you do, and the nation’s largest companies not only usually pay no taxes at all but also get billions every year in subsidies funded with your tax dollars. So many families have fallen out of the middle class that this country is experiencing epidemics of suicide, opioid addiction, and divorce. Our defense budget is bloated, while our returning soldiers find it harder and harder to get jobs or services.

Although it’s almost never discussed in our highly monopolized media, monopoly is why right-wing radio and TV are found in every nook and cranny, every town small and large across America, while progressive media is marginalized. It’s why our politics are broken and foreign governments have been able to manipulate our elections and seize control of so many of our politicians.

Source:

Cancer and Monopoly

Obama’s former acting Solicitor General and a senator-turned-lobbyist are helping a dark money group pressure the high court.

September 14, 2023 / CounterPoint

Deep-pocketed interests are pulling out all the stops — including employing top Democrats to plead their case.

Obama’s former acting Solicitor General and a senator-turned-lobbyist are helping a dark money group pressure the high court.

The former Supreme Court lawyer for the Obama administration and a Democratic senator-turned-lobbyist are pressuring justices to block Congress from ever instituting a wealth tax on the superrich, according to court filings reviewed by The Lever.

Former Obama acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal recently submitted an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Moore v. United States on behalf of the group Saving America’s Family Enterprises (SAFE). That anonymously funded group — whose board includes corporate lobbyists — has spearheaded campaigns against Democrats’ efforts to tax the inheritances and wealth of millionaires and billionaires.

Now the group is aiming to use the seemingly obscure corporate taxation case to elicit a broad ruling that outlaws all wealth taxes.

SAFE’s board of directors includes two corporate lobbyists: Missy Edwards and David Lehman. Edwards lobbies for General Motors, the real estate industry, and electric utilities, while Lehman lobbies for defense contractors.

SAFE employs Forbes Tate, a lobbying firm run by former officials from President Bill Clinton’s administration that has coordinated the healthcare industry’s campaign against Medicare for All.

Katyal is an MSNBC mainstay who came to prominence as a liberal defender of Republican President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, all of whom will now rule on the case. In recent years, Katyal has helped Nestlé defend itself in a child slavery case before the Supreme Court and represented Johnson & Johnson in its bid to use bankruptcy to block lawsuits from cancer victims.

Source:

Top Dems Press Supreme Court To Block Billionaire Tax

The GOP’s impeachment push is an attack on democracy

September 11, 2023 / CounterPoint

Republicans filed impeachment articles on Biden before he was sworn into office.

Republicans have openly admitted that their efforts to impeach President Joe Biden — which will begin in earnest this week as House members return to DC from summer break — are in bad faith. They don’t just want to tarnish Biden. They want to tarnish the impeachment process itself.

As the GOP has become increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic, Republicans have become increasingly committed to undermining and mocking forms of democratic accountability. A nakedly partisan and clownish impeachment is useful because it signals to voters that all impeachments are clown shows, and all impeachments are partisan. That exculpates former President Donald Trump and delegitimizes resistance to him should he win the presidency again.

By September 2022, Republicans in the then-Democratic-controlled House had initiated no less than nine impeachment resolutions.

Some of these resolutions proposed impeaching Biden for (supposedly) failing to control immigration on the Mexican border. Others focused on disputes over the handling of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Still, others were based on Republican claims that Biden’s moratorium on evictions during the pandemic was unconstitutional.

Source:

The GOP’s impeachment push is an attack on democracy

US Military Held Hostage by MAGA Republicans

September 9, 2023 / CounterPoint

Listen to Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger talk about the impact on the spouses and children of military families who deserve more than cheap platitudes and drunken clapping for their contributions to our nation.

Every person with a phone should call their two US senators and members of Congress and express outrage over this. You can contact the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. A switchboard operator will connect you directly with the Senate office you request. To find your representative, you can use this tool. Demand action on this very serious issue.

By Carlos Del Toro, Frank Kendall, and Christine Wormuth
September 4, 2023

As the civilian leaders of the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, and Army, we are proud to work alongside exceptional military leaders who are skilled, motivated, and empowered to protect our national security.

These officers and the millions of service members they lead are the foundation of America’s enduring military advantage. Yet this foundation is being actively eroded by the actions of a single U.S. senator, Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who is blocking the confirmation of our most senior military officers.

The senator asserts that this blanket and unprecedented “hold,” which he has maintained for more than six months, is about opposition to Defense Department policies that ensure service members and their families have access to reproductive health no matter where they are stationed.

After the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, this policy is critical and necessary to meet our obligations to the force. It is also fully within the law, as confirmed by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Senators have many legislative and oversight tools to show their opposition to a specific policy. They are free to introduce legislation, gather support for that legislation, and pass it. But placing a blanket hold on all general and flag officer nominees, who as apolitical officials have traditionally been exempt from the hold process, is unfair to these military leaders and their families.

And it is putting our national security at risk.

Thus far, the hold has prevented the Defense Department from placing almost 300 of our most experienced and battle-tested leaders into critical posts around the world.

Three of our five military branches — the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps — have no Senate-confirmed service chief in place. Instead, these jobs — and dozens of others across the force — are being performed by acting officials without the full range of legal authorities necessary to make the decisions that will sustain the United States’ military edge.

Across the services, many generals and admirals are being forced to perform two roles simultaneously. The strain of this double duty places a real and unfair burden on these officers, the organizations they lead, and their families.

The blanket hold is also exacting a personal toll on those who least deserve it.

Each of us has seen the stress this hold is inflicting up and down the chain of command, whether in the halls of the Pentagon or at bases and outposts around the world.

We know officers who have incurred significant unforeseen expenses and are facing genuine financial stress because they have had to relocate their families or unexpectedly maintain two residences.

Military spouses who have worked to build careers of their own are unable to look for jobs because they don’t know when or if they will move. Children don’t know where they will go to school, which is particularly hard given how frequently military children change schools already.

These military leaders are being forced to endure costly separations from their families — a painful experience they have come to know from nearly 20 years of deployments to places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

All because of the actions of a single senator.

Any claim that holding up the promotions of top officers does not directly damage the military is wrong — plain and simple.

The leaders whose lives and careers are on hold include scores of combat veterans who have led our troops into deadly combat with valor and distinction in the decades since 9/11. These men and women each have decades of experience and are exactly who we want — and need — to be leading our military at such a critical period of time.

The impact of this hold does not stop at these officers or their family members.

With the promotions of our most senior leaders on hold, there is a domino effect upending the lives of our more junior officers, too.

Looking over the horizon, the prolonged uncertainty and political battles over these military nominations will have a corrosive effect on the force.

The generals and admirals who will be leading our forces a decade from now are colonels and captains today. They are watching this spectacle and might conclude that their service at the highest ranks of our military is no longer valued by members of Congress or, by extension, the American public.

Rather than continue making sacrifices to serve our nation, some might leave uniformed service for other opportunities, robbing the Defense Department of talent cultivated over decades that we now need most to maintain our superiority over our rivals and adversaries.

Throughout our careers in national security, we have deeply valued the bipartisan support shown for our service members and their families. But rather than seeking a resolution to this impasse in that spirit, Tuberville has suggested he is going to further escalate this confrontation by launching baseless political attacks against these men and women.

We believe that the vast majority of senators and Americans across the political spectrum recognize the stakes of this moment and the dangers of politicizing our military leaders. It is time to lift this dangerous hold and confirm our senior military leaders.

Carlos Del Toro, Secretary of the US Navy
Frank Kendall, Secretary of the US Air Force
Christine Wormuth, Secretary of the US Army

Creating an Alternate, Autocratic Reality

September 8, 2023 / CounterPoint

Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Andreessen are American oligarchs, controlling online access for billions of users on Facebook, Twitter, Threads, Instagram, and WhatsApp, including 80 percent of the US population. Moreover, from the outside, they appear to be more interested in replacing our current reality—and our economic system, imperfect as it is—with something far more opaque, concentrated, and unaccountable, which, if it comes to pass, they will control.

Their plan for your future involves nothing less than confronting the nihilism of a looming dystopia. And four of the projects they are pursuing to address their visions will need tens of trillions of dollars of (mostly public) investment capital over the next two decades.

These Technocrats make up a kind of interlocking directorate of Silicon Valley, each investing in or sitting on the boards of the others’ companies. Their vast digital domain controls your personal information; affects how billions of people live, work, and love; and sows online chaos, inciting mob violence and sparking runs on stocks. These four men have long been regarded as technologically progressive heroes, but they are actually part of a broader antidemocratic, authoritarian turn within the tech world, deeply invested in preserving the status quo and in keeping their market-leadership positions or near-monopolies—and their multi-billion-dollar fortunes secure from higher taxes. (“Competition is for suckers,” Thiel once posited.)

Excerpted from The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto by Jonathan Taplin. Copyright © 2023 by Jonathan Taplin. Printed with permission of Public Affairs, an imprint of Perseus Books LLC, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, N.Y. All rights reserved.

Source:

How Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Andreessen-Four Billionaire Techno-Oligarchs-Are Creating an Alternate, Autocratic Reality

Total Abortion Bans

September 3, 2023 / CounterPoint

Between 1973 and 2005, over 400 women were arrested for miscarriage in the U.S. With the current shift toward restrictive abortion policies, the continued criminalization of pregnancies that don’t result in birth, despite how common they are, is a growing concern.

Twenty-two states now ban abortion or restrict the procedure earlier in pregnancy than the standard set by Roe v. Wade, which governed reproductive rights for nearly half a century until the Supreme Court overturned the decision last year.

By Kathryn Kavanagh, Associate Professor of Biology, UMass Dartmouth

Many state legislatures are seriously considering human embryos at the earliest stages of development for legal personhood. Total abortion bans that consider humans to have full rights from the moment of conception have created a confusing legal domain that affects a wide range of areas, including assisted reproductive technologies, contraception, essential medical care, and parental rights, among others.

However, an important biological feature of human embryos has been left out of a lot of ethical and even scientific discussion informing reproductive policy – most human embryos die before anyone, including doctors, even know they exist. This embryo loss typically occurs in the first two months after fertilization, before the clump of cells has developed into a fetus with immature forms of the body’s major organs. Total abortion bans that define personhood at conception mean that full legal rights exist for a 5-day-old blastocyst, a hollow ball of cells roughly 0.008 inches (0.2 millimeters) across with a high likelihood of disintegrating within a few days.

As an evolutionary biologist whose career has focused on how embryos develop in a wide variety of species over the course of evolution, I was struck by the extraordinarily high likelihood that most human embryos die due to random genetic errors. Around 60% of embryos disintegrate before people may even be aware that they are pregnant. Another 10% of pregnancies end in miscarriage after the person knows they’re pregnant. These losses make clear that the vast majority of human embryos don’t survive to birth.

The emerging scientific consensus is that a high rate of early embryo loss is a common and normal occurrence in people. Research on the causes and evolutionary reasons for early embryo loss provides insight into this fundamental feature of human biology and its implications for reproductive health decisions.

Intrinsic embryo loss is common in mammals

Intrinsic embryo loss, or embryo death due to internal factors like genetics, is common in many mammals, such as cows and sheep. This persistent “reproductive wastage” has frustrated breeders attempting to increase livestock production but who are unable to eliminate high embryonic mortality.

In contrast, most embryo loss in animals that lay eggs like fish and frogs is due to external factors, such as predators, disease, or other environmental threats. These lost embryos are effectively “recycled” in the ecosystem as food. These egg-laying animals have little to no intrinsic embryo loss.

Each square shows the first 24 hours of embryo development in a different animal species. From left to right: 1. zebrafish (Danio rerio), 2. sea urchin (Lytechinus variegatus), 3. black widow spider (Latrodectus), 4. tardigrade (Hypsibius dujardini), 5. sea squirt (Ciona intestinalis), 6. comb jelly (Ctenophore, Mnemiopsis leidyi), 7. parchment tube worm (Chaetopterus variopedatus), 8. roundworm (Caenorhabditis elegans), and 9. slipper snail (Crepidula fornicata).

In people, the most common outcome of reproduction by far is embryo loss due to random genetic errors. An estimated 70% to 75% of human conceptions fail to survive to birth. That number includes both embryos that are reabsorbed into the parent’s body before anyone knows an egg has been fertilized and miscarriages that happen later in the pregnancy.

An evolutionary drive for embryo loss

In humans, an evolutionary force called meiotic drive plays a role in early embryo loss. The meiotic drive is a type of competition within the genome of unfertilized eggs, where variations of different genes can manipulate the cell division process to favor their own transmission to the offspring over other variations.

Statistical models attempting to explain why most human embryos fail to develop usually start by observing that a massive number of random genetic errors occur in the mother’s eggs even before fertilization.

When sperm fertilize eggs, the resulting embryo’s DNA is packaged into 46 chromosomes – 23 from each parent. This genetic information guides the embryo through the development process as its cells divide and grow. When random mistakes occur during chromosome replication, fertilized eggs can inherit cells with these errors and result in a condition called aneuploidy, which essentially means “the wrong number of chromosomes.” With the instructions for development now disorganized due to mixed-up chromosomes, embryos with aneuploidy are usually doomed.

As many as three out of four human embryos naturally die in the development process. Red Hayabusa/iStock via Getty Images Plus

As many as three out of four human embryos naturally die in the development process. Red Hayabusa/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Because human and other mammal embryos are highly protected from environmental threats – unlike animals that lay eggs outside their bodies – researchers have theorized that these early losses have little effect on the reproductive success of the parent. This may allow humans and other mammals to tolerate meiotic drive over evolutionary time.

Counterintuitively, there may even be benefits to the high rates of genetic errors that result in embryo loss. Early loss of aneuploid embryos can direct maternal resources to healthier single newborns rather than twins or multiples. Also, in the deeper evolutionary history of a species, having a huge pool of genetic variants could occasionally provide a beneficial new adaptation that could aid in human survival in changing environments.

Clarence Thomas is an Inferior Justice — and He Knows it

September 2, 2023 / CounterPoint

And now Black America will be punished for it.

David St. Vincent

I do not publicize this conclusion lightly. I am painfully aware of the historical stereotype about the intellectual capacities of Black men in America. As much as anyone can in the modern theater, I have lived the experience fully. But after thorough examination over an extended period of time, it is abundantly clear that Clarence Thomas, despite his high position, is not a man of high intellect. At the bottom, in a room full of people with high intelligence, Thomas is objectively inferior. And nobody knows that better than he does. If you find that assertion difficult to accept, Thomas’ public presentations of late should make that a lot easier for you.

So while people of good conscience are working to build something good out of the wreckage left behind by the worst Black man in American public life this side of Herschel Walker, we can hopefully be buoyed by the knowledge that history has always called upon legitimately smart people to clean up the mess left by all the rest.

Let me be clear: It is absolutely fine to be a man of unremarkable intellect; unless of course you aspire to, and attain, one of the few positions in America where your intellect will always be on display for the entire country to scrutinize at will. And again, Thomas knows that quite well. He is and has been since law school, deeply fearful of how he sounds speaking in the presence of White people. This man was so afraid of how he articulated himself, that it would eventually expose his intellectual limitations, that for ten full Supreme Court terms starting in 2006, he sat silently on the bench, asking no questions of the attorneys presenting their cases. He may as well have been sitting there leering at the pornographic magazines he has such an affection for. For all practical purposes, he was a prop: a big, black, male prop, wearing that black robe and all its powers with it.

So while people of good conscience are working to build something good out of the wreckage left behind by the worst Black man in American public life this side of Herschel Walker, we can hopefully be buoyed by the knowledge that history has always called upon legitimately smart people to clean up the mess left by all the rest.

Clarence Thomas is an Inferior Justice – and He Knows it

Call it What it Is. White Terrorism

August 31, 2023 / CounterPoint

The three victims were identified on Sunday by Sheriff T.K. Waters of Jacksonville as Angela Michelle Carr, 52; Anolt Joseph Laguerre Jr., known as A.J., 29, who worked at the store; and Jerrald De’Shaun Gallion, 19.

“He took that opportunity to put his bulletproof vest on outside and to put his mask on outside and then proceed to the store where he committed this horrible act,” Waters told the press. Sherri Onks, a special agent for the FBI in Jacksonville, said they “opened a federal civil rights investigation” and “will pursue this incident as a hate crime.” While this language sounds reassuring, the shooter killed himself. So, while we will likely learn more about the self-avowed white supremacist in the coming days, their investigation will unlikely result in any arrests since evidence suggests he acted alone. The weapon he used, an AR-15 style rifle, had swastikas drawn on them with white paint, and according to Waters, the gunman’s manifesto said, “He wanted to kill niggers.” Since World War II, the swastika has become a popular symbol for white supremacists, who admire the heinous crimes committed by Nazis.

Perhaps one of the most terrifying aspects of this entire ordeal is the negligence of Americans to identify this as an act of terror. If we make the mistake, as in the past, of describing the event as a one-off, we’ll miss the opportunity to have a meaningful conversation about the danger of endorsing racist beliefs. Killing Black people and leaving a manifesto encouraging more acts of violence is more than a hate crime. It’s terrorism, and it’s high time we describe it as such.

Despite this White man’s decision to hunt down Black people in their communities, America is reluctant to identify this problem as white terrorism. When a Muslim man commits a crime, Americans readily call this an act of terror. When a Black man commits a crime, journalists readily describe the event as gang-related. Yet, when a White man commits a crime, despite revealing ties to white supremacists, he is often described as crazy or irrational rather than acknowledging his violence is tied to something bigger. When a White person kills Black people in this country, it’s evident that he is not truly acting alone. He is, along with other racists, creating a hostile environment, actively terrorizing Black people in their homes, their schools, their local stores, and communities.

Source:

Why is America So Reluctant to Call These Murders White Terrorism?

Beware the Logical Fallacies

August 29, 2023 / CounterPoint

A logical fallacy is an argument that can be disproven through reasoning. This is different from a subjective argument or one that can be disproven with facts; for a position to be a logical fallacy, it must be logically flawed or deceptive in some way.

You’ll find logical fallacies just about anywhere you find people debating and using rhetoric, especially in spaces that aren’t academic or professional in nature. In fact, we can almost guarantee that you’ve encountered logical fallacies on social media, especially in the comments under divisive posts. But remember that they can and often do appear in academic writing, especially in the kinds of writing where the author has to defend a position, like argumentative essays and persuasive writing. They can even show up in expository writing.

The best way to avoid making logical fallacies in your own writing is to familiarize yourself with them and learn how to recognize them. That way, they’ll stick out to you when you’re reading your first draft, and you’ll see exactly where your writing needs thoughtful revision.

What are 15 common types of logical fallacies?

As you’ll see below, there are a lot of ways an argument can be flawed. Take a look at fifteen of the most commonly used logical fallacies.

1 Ad hominem

An ad hominem fallacy is one that attempts to invalidate an opponent’s position based on a personal trait or fact about the opponent rather than through logic.

Example: Katherine is a bad choice for mayor because she didn’t grow up in this town.

2 Red herring

A red herring is an attempt to shift focus from the debate at hand by introducing an irrelevant point.

Example: Losing a tooth can be scary, but have you heard about the Tooth Fairy?

3 Straw man

A straw man argument is one that argues against a hyperbolic, inaccurate version of the opposition rather than their actual argument.

Example: Erin thinks we need to stop using all plastics, right now, to save the planet from climate change.

4 Equivocation

An equivocation is a statement crafted to mislead or confuse readers or listeners by using multiple meanings or interpretations of a word or simply through unclear phrasing.

Example: While I have a clear plan for the campus budget that accounts for every dollar spent, my opponent simply wants to throw money at special interest projects.

5 Slippery slope

With a slippery slope fallacy, the arguer claims a specific series of events will follow one starting point, typically with no supporting evidence for this chain of events.

Example: If we make an exception for Bijal’s service dog, then other people will want to bring their dogs. Then everybody will bring their dog, and before you know it, our restaurant will be overrun with dogs, their slobber, their hair, and all the noise they make, and nobody will want to eat here anymore.

6 Hasty generalization

A hasty generalization is a statement made after considering just one or a few examples rather than relying on more extensive research to back up the claim. It’s important to keep in mind that what constitutes sufficient research depends on the issue at hand and the statement being made about it.

Example: I felt nauseated both times I ate pizza from Georgio’s, so I must be allergic to something in pizza.

7 Appeal to authority

In an appeal to authority, the arguer claims an authority figure’s expertise to support a claim despite this expertise being irrelevant or overstated.

Example: If you want to be healthy, you need to stop drinking coffee. I read it on a fitness blog.

8 False dilemma

A false dilemma, also known as a false dichotomy, claims there are only two options in a given situation. Often, these two options are extreme opposites of each other, failing to acknowledge that other, more reasonable, options exist.

Example: If you don’t support my decision, you were never really my friend.

9 Bandwagon fallacy

With the bandwagon fallacy, the arguer claims that a certain action is the right thing to do because it’s popular.

Example: It’s fine to wait until the last minute to write your paper. Everybody does it!

10 Appeal to ignorance

An appeal to ignorance is a claim that something must be true because it hasn’t been proven false. It can also be a claim that something must be false because it hasn’t been proven true. This is also known as the burden of proof fallacy.

Example: There must be fairies living in our attic because nobody’s ever proven that there aren’t fairies living in our attic.

11 Circular argument

A circular argument is one that uses the same statement as both the premise and the conclusion. No new information or justification is introduced.

Example: Peppers are the easiest vegetable to grow because I think peppers are the easiest vegetable to grow.

12 Sunk cost fallacy

With the sunk cost fallacy, the arguer justifies their decision to continue a specific course of action by the amount of time or money they’ve already spent on it.

Example: I’m not enjoying this book, but I bought it, so I have to finish reading it.

13 Appeal to pity

An appeal to pity attempts to sway a reader’s or listener’s opinion by provoking them emotionally.

Example: I know I should have been on time for the interview, but I woke up late and felt really bad about it, then the stress of being late made it hard to concentrate on driving here.

14 Causal Fallacy

A causal fallacy is one that implies a relationship between two things where one can’t actually be proven.

Example: When ice cream sales are up, so are shark attacks. Therefore, buying ice cream increases your risk of being bitten by a shark.

15 Appeal to hypocrisy

An appeal to hypocrisy, also known as a tu quoque fallacy, is a rebuttal that responds to one claim with reactive criticism rather than with a response to the claim itself.

Example: “You don’t have enough experience to be the new leader.” “Neither do you!”

Although this list covers the most commonly seen logical fallacies, it’s not exhaustive. Other logical fallacies include the no true Scotsman fallacy (“New Yorkers fold their pizza, so you must not really be from New York if you eat yours with utensils.”) and the Texas sharpshooter fallacy (cherry-picking data to support a claim rather than drawing a logical conclusion from a broad body of evidence).

Source: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/logical-fallacies/