Recently, Senator Rand Paul went after Dr. Anthony Fauci by saying, “I don’t think you’re the end-all. I don’t think you’re the one person who gets to make a decision.”
This is a great example of an intellectually dishonest form of arguing called the “straw man fallacy” which is one of the few things I remember about debating.
In my family, debates with my brothers usually centered around liberal use of profanity, talking louder than your opponent and offering to go “out on the lawn” to settling things. Not the most mature approach, but I’m guessing a few of us wouldn’t mind seeing United States Senators settle their differences in the same way.
But let’s try to forget the entertaining image of Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi slugging it out on the Capitol lawn and get back to the “straw man fallacy.”
Here’s a definition:
A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent’s argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be “attacking a straw man.”
In other words: set up a phony opponent (the straw man) and look tough when you knock him down.
People resort to the straw man fallacy because attacking the argument the opponent actually made isn’t going to be so easy. It’s like a boxer being afraid of his opponent so he punches out a ring girl instead.
In this case, Sen. Paul was talking about reopening schools because kids were pretty much immune to the COVID-19 virus and Dr. Fauci warned, “We’ve got to be careful we are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune.” Which, seems like pretty sound thinking and hard to argue with, so Rand used his “end-all” straw man fallacy.
But Dr. Fauci never claimed to be the end-all or the one person who gets to make a decision.
Now here’s what Dr. Fauci did say: “I’m a scientist, a physician and a public health official. I give advice, according to the best scientific evidence. I don’t give advice about economic things.”
Basically, we have people like Dr. Fauci around to give us advice on public health based on the “best scientific evidence” and right now a lot of people don’t like what they’re hearing.
Staying on message
It’s just my personal opinion, but it seems to me the Republicans do a way better job of staying on message than the Democrats.
The Democrats could have a four-hour debate on where to have lunch while the Republicans appear to get a daily memo about what today’s message is going to be and then walk around like zombies chanting, “Drain the swamp” or “Lock her up.”
And it seems like the people on the right got a memo saying it is now time to attack the scientists who keep saying stuff the Republicans don’t want to hear.
Both Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson went after Dr. Fauci with the same straw man technique, proclaiming nobody elected him to anything which is a really stupid argument for the following reasons:
Nobody ever said Fauci was an elected official so pointing out he isn’t one doesn’t mean anything.
Getting elected to public office doesn’t make you an expert in public health.
Nobody elected Laura Ingraham or Tucker Carlson to anything either and yet they still think we ought to listen to them.
Tucker Carlson also asked why anybody is listening to Fauci and my first thought was: the medical degree, his experience in dealing with infectious disease and the fact that – unlike some politicians and TV show hosts I could name – he seems to be telling us the truth?
One of the problems the politicians have right now are polls showing more people trust the scientists, so to even things up the politicians need to attack the scientists’ credibility.
And if they have to use an army of straw men to do that, it doesn’t appear to bother them.
Stay safe, everybody.
Science vs. politics
If science is represented as a scientist then Trump looks pretty smart here since scientists and virus researchers get closer to exposure than most of us. And, again, it’s early days and the science at this point is theory and conclusions drawn on “best” evidence. Other “evidence” has come in suggesting that homemade masks are not effective. The truth and real evidence has yet to be proven. Except in a laboratory study how do you know wether a patient was infested by aerosol borne virus or surface contact?