Who do You Think You're Stimulating?

This site is dedicated to pointing out logical fallacies and propaganda techniques employed by newsmakers--ok, politicians and the media, really--but it's always fun to find examples in the news and illustrate them with my own experiences.

A few years ago I was teaching a pre-college composition course. This is a course that used to be called developmental, and before that remedial, and before that "bonehead" English (Propaganda Alert: Euphemism). One member of the class was a big, beefy young man with an attitude about English, so when I handed back his first in-class essay with a "D" grade on it, he wasn't happy with me. After class he dropped his paper on my desk, glared at me and said, "Why can't we have a real test?"

I confess I have a weakness for sarcasm, but I hasten to point out that while it may not be particularly polite, it's not a fallacy. I replied, "This was a real test. See your real grade?"

I think that was clever, but it was lost on my student. He said, "No, like, one where there's different answers, and I pick the right one."

I patiently explained that this was a writing class, and to determine his abilities I had to evaluate his writing. He replied, "Well, that's just stupid. I've taken this class three times before, and nobody else does it like that."

Besides providing me with a great teaching story, my student was falling victim to a classic fallacy. He thought that because everybody does something one way, that must be the only right way to do it. Vox populi, vox dei. "The voice of the people is the Voice of God." Except it's not.

Now President Obama is getting caught in the same type of error, and it's catching him from both directions. In fact, the whole Democrat power structure is engaged in the same kind of fallacious thinking. After his "stimulus" bill squeaked out of the House last week without a single Republican vote, the President held a pep rally to hearten his fainting party members. "We won," he told them, referring to last November's election, and so they get to do whatever they want. There's the Fallacy Alert: Vox populi, Vox dei.

The problem is that in our democratic republic the election is only the first opportunity for the people to speak, and the leaders continue to be accountable to them throughout their terms. Even if the Democrats did win last fall, they really can't do whatever they want because the people can change their minds so fast. At this point, less than a month after the Inauguration, barely 35% of the people--the same ones who voted for him last fall--now support the President's "stimulus" bill. They still like the President, but they recognize a pork-padded catastrophe when they see one. In fact, Congressional emails and telephones have been slammed by The People voicing their opposition. If the voice of the people really were the the great power in the land, the President would have withdrawn the bill long since. Hold your breath and wait for that to happen. At this point he really doesn't want to hear the voice of "God."

Instead the President is travelling around the country attempting to pump up support for his plan. It's a bad sign that he has to take to this extremity so early in his Presidency. If he really had the people behind him, it wouldn't be necessary to go out on the stump for it. President Obama has an unstoppable majority in both Houses of Congress that can pass whatever bills he wants, and probably will for a while. But I wonder if the President is starting to suspect the same thing that I am--that the people elected him as a symbolic President rather than as a working President. If that's the case, and it's looking more like it every day, it won't take long for them to begin resenting all that change he campaigned on in such vague terms.

PS

post script: After the quarter was over, I found out that beefy "kid" was twenty-six years old and had done time for assaulting an officer. It's probably just as well I didn't know that at the time.