Please Vote...Independently

My Dear Friends,

I truly don't care who gets your vote this upcoming election and I sincerely hope you vote, no matter the candidate you support. However, as the rhetoric gets more fierce and the mud slings even harder, I would simply encourage you to look out for a few techniques commonly used by campaigns to stir up emotions and by media outlets to sensationalize the stories and drum up viewership. I have three items for your consideration: context, spin, and straw man.

Here is a fictional scenario: Bob says "It's an unfortunate truth that fat people must die, on average, younger than the average population because they are more susceptible to many diseases." Jack then prints a large poster and starts an ad campaign saying "Bob is a terrible person because he said 'fat people must die!' More than 50% of the country is overweight, and he thinks you all should die!" This campaign by Jack is obviously taking Bob's words out of context. 

Jack could also say "Bob doesn't believe in science or modern medicine because he believes that it's inevitible that overweight people will always be doomed to die younger than the rest of the population." Jack is putting a spin on the quote here. Taking words out of context removes the original meaning of the phrase. Putting a spin on a quote adds additional meaning to a phrase, which may or may not have been intended. 

Jack could then start asking the question "Do you think we would be better off as a society if we turned out backs on science and killed off all overweight people? If not, than vote for me!" Jack is essentially running against an imaginary opponent at this point, asking people to decide between himself or someone who doesn't believe in science at all and wants to kill fat people. This other person doesn't exist. A straw man argument can be thought as taking an irrational or completely outrageous position that most sensible people will not agree with that is superficially related to your opponent's position, and project it as your opponent. It's very easy to build momentum against this opponent, being that his position is ridiculous.

Now let's look at some real examples.

Context:
"You didn't build that"
"I like to fire people"
"I'm not concerned about the poor"

Spin:
"My opponent thinks that all people on welfare are lazy"
"My opponent has no problem with growing the welfare state"

Straw Man
"Do you think America is better off as a society where only the top 1% have opportunities?"
"Who wants to have a communist society and become like Cuba?"

My plea to you -- if you're getting all riled up, please remember it's by design. Stop letting campaigns and media outlets tell you what to think and how to vote. Take the time to read the trascripts and watch the videos. Most importantly, think for yourselves.