Thanksgiving dinner with a side of Straw Man?
If your Thanksgiving dinner included any lively political discussion, chances are someone brought up a Straw Man argument. This is a type of logical fallacy whereby:
someone takes another person’s argument or point, distorts it or exaggerates it in some kind of extreme way, and then attacks the extreme distortion, as if that is really the claim the first person is making.
In the political arena, Republicans often use the Straw Man against Democratic proposals by making false, overbroad generalizations about the proposals, and then going after the fictional scenario they just concocted. For example, President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats have proposed, in the Build Back Better legislation that was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, to raise income taxes only on households with over $400,000 annual income. Indeed, many Americans would see lower taxes under the Democratic proposal. But you are hearing Republicans say instead that President Biden and the Democrats want to raise taxes on “middle class Americans.” A similar Republican Straw Man from the past is the PolitiFact Lie of the Year 2010 that President Barack Obama‘s Affordable Care Act was “a government takeover of healthcare,” when in fact the law left our private healthcare and health insurance systems in place. Note that such Straw Man arguments often feed existing political narratives, such as the Republican narratives that Democrats favor “Big Government” and “higher taxes.”
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2016 Elections, Affordable Care Act, Bowzer, Build Back Better, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, healthcare, Jon Bauman, President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, Republicans, Russia, straw man, taxes, Thanksgiving, Twitter, U.S. House
Hopefully your Thanksgiving dinner won’t be like this
An ongoing theme here at Messaging Matters is that a good number of Democrats and Republicans either want to, or have to, continue having relationships with each other. This includes, for example, friends and loved ones. However, perhaps nowhere do political differences become more heated, awkward or unpleasant than at the Thanksgiving table. If crazy Uncle Charlie starts spouting his Fox “News” talking points, and you simply respond with talking points from your favorite liberal website, no one is going to achieve understanding or get along. Moreover, this Thanksgiving, with Joe Biden‘s defeat of Donald Trump in the presidential election fresh on everyone’s mind, threatens to be one of the most contentious of them all. Accordingly, rather than simply passing along argumentative talking points, we have created a Democratic Translator that will let Democrats state their positions in a non-confrontational, plausibly deniable way, so that not just fruits but relationships are preserved for Thanksgiving. For example:
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Thanksgiving dinner table, before the political food fight
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has released a humorous, menu-style set of talking points for Democrats to respond to that Republican blowhard who seems to spout off at everyone’s Thanksgiving dinner. The talking points, which can be found in this .pdf, are entitled “Know Your Stuffing.” Each subject has a cute Thanksgiving dinner theme, complete with food graphics, and is designed as a response to a Republican rant, since they always seem to be the ones who bring up these political subjects at the holiday table. For example, there is “Aunt Mary’s ‘There Was No Quid-Pie-Quo,'” described as “a crust so flaky, it falls apart the moment you present it with evidence.” Responses to this talking point are listed under “What to Bring,” and include:
- Multiple members of the Trump administration have testified before Congress there was a quid pro quo agreement with Ukraine.
- Trump himself—in a memo he released—admitted he withheld aid from Ukraine until they dug up dirt on his political opponents.
Both of these responses even include footnotes to reputable sources for this information.
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Peaceful looking Thanksgiving dinner
Each Thanksgiving, we see tips for Democrats on how to react to conservative Uncle Charlie when he starts raising his Republican Fox News talking points at the holiday meal. However, most such tips are reactive, and assume that our conservative relatives get to set the table first by initiating the conversation based on their talking points. We know that it’s tougher to prevail in political discussions that are framed by your opponent. Instead, how about going on offense and bringing up your points first, thereby tilting the field of debate in your favor? Here are some possible points to bring up at the Thanksgiving dinner table tomorrow:
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Leave a comment! Tags: Barack Obama, Blue Wave, Democrats, Donald Trump, Fox News, House of Representatives, Jamal Khashoggi, Republicans, Robert Mueller, Russia, Saudi Arabia, stock market, Thanksgiving, Vladimir Putin, Yemen
Thanksgiving dinner table: calm before the storm
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the official arm of the Democratic Party seeking to elect Democrats to the House of Representatives, has released its annual “Know Your Stuffing” Thanksgiving dinner table talking points. This year’s DCCC guide, sent by email to supporters and available in .pdf format, is billed as a “guide to surviving Thanksgiving with your Republican family.” The DCCC guide, which has a friendly graphical format, has been kept simple, covering just four topics, in the form of suggested Democratic responses to the following political statements expected by Republicans around the Thanksgiving dinner table this Thursday:
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Angry Internet posting cat
Elizabeth Lauten‘s resignation and a case pending with the U.S. Supreme Court regarding Facebook posts give us a good reminder about what’s stupid, if not outright illegal, to post on the Internet.
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It’s almost that time of the year again, when every Thanksgiving gathering will have at least one old uncle who’s a right wing blowhard. Old Uncle Ralph, after a few Budweisers, will no doubt spout the latest Fox talking points on “Obamacare,” Benghazi or something else. The good folks at Environmental Working Group have come up with some good talking points of their own regarding one of the conservatives’ pet issues, climate change.
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