Strategic Lying and Obama

In the chapter entitled "The Arts of Selling" from 1958's Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley wrote that "[t]he survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information. A dictatorship, on the other hand, maintains itself by censoring or distorting the facts, and by appealing, not to reason, not to enlightened self-interest, but to passion and prejudice [.]" Which is why under the soft dictatorship of Barack Hussein Obama, the American people may be hard pressed to make realistic choices since they are far too susceptible to the distortions of language. Logical fallacies are really "weaponized irrationality" gussied up to catch people unaware. Ad hominem attacks against an individual instead of the merit of an idea have been a hallmark of this administration. In 2014 when attempting to persuade the country on his immigration policy, Obama utilized the ergo decedo fallacy by attacking Republicans for their party position rather than for their argument.

Logical fallacies have long been the lifeblood of dishonest politicians and in Obama, we find an abundance of them. A favorite fallacy is the strawman, which is an attack on a position that is not even held by the other side. Obama's strawmen have been those never-named naysayers Obama claims are "urging him to sit on his hands at the White House and do nothing to address any of the economic or national security problems facing the country." Some telltale indicators that the straw man tactic is being used are the words "there are those who say" or "some say" as in Obama's "[s]ome people say that maybe I'm being too idealistic." Then there is the false choice embedded inside another straw man as in his "You can't have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience"-- yet no one ever asked for 100 percent of these things in the first place. More currently, Americans who oppose the Iran nuclear deal are "crazies." Those Jewish groups who still cannot perceive the existential threat to America and Israel need to recall that Islamic Iran allows lying to unbelievers in order to defeat them. Taqiyya is saying something that isn't true while kitman is lying by omission. Thus, to advance Islam, one gains the "trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them." Coupled with his use of logical fallacies and his schooling in Islam, Obama surely knows these tenets which is why he can blithely claim that Iran will be compliant. Demonizing conservatives as teabaggers is another ad hominem attack that eliminates Obama's need to actually defend his position since he has now demeaned his opponents. His intentional "targeting of conservative and Christian organizations and individuals for harassment, intimidation, and ultimately for political destruction" shows his mastery of this fallacy. Furthermore, in 2012, when Mitt Romney was talking about economic plans and policies, Obama attacked Romney's profession, thus distracting the listener from Romney's factual arguments. The other blame-it-on-someone fallacy known as Post hoc ergo propter hoc has been in constant use by Obama as he blamed Bush, Israeli settlements, and gun owners, rather than taking responsibility for his actions. When using a logical fallacy known as argumentum ad antiquitatem, or appeal to antiquity, Obama twists the truth. Steve Hanke at Cato explains that Obama, by referring to the Declaration of Independence, made an "illegitimate appeal to ages past in order to justify his case for collective or state action." Thus, "while invoking America's founding documents . . . to justify collective action" Obama brazenly and incorrectly makes parallels that simply do not exist. In 2011 when our credit rating was downgraded, Obama referred to Warren Buffet who said "If there were a quadruple-A rating, I'd give the United States that." Yet this allusion has nothing to do with the burgeoning debt. It is an appeal to authority (argumentum ad verecundiam) -- but it is irrelevant what Buffet thinks of the credit rating and serves only to muddy the real issue of a serious economic downturn for the U.S. Michael K. Baranowski explains that when Obama was elected in 2008, the U.S. imported 57% of its oil. By 2010, dependence on foreign oil was down to under 50%, thus giving the impression that Obama had done a really fine job of reducing dependence on foreign oil, a notion that Obama was only too pleased to highlight. But the 44th president conveniently neglected to state that such reduction in dependency had actually begun four years before he took office. This is an example of a Post Hoc fallacy that Obama used to take credit for something he had nothing to do with. In the same vein, this fallacy can be used when someone does not want to take credit for an event. Thus, an insignificant filmmaker is punished for the Benghazi debacle, rather than the administration owning up to the actual events which transpired. The tu quoque fallacy or appeal to hypocrisy is the "you, also" appeal that tends to discredit the validity of an opponent's logical argument because after all someone else has done a similar thing. It is the "wave it away" approach. Thus, dismissing the ISIS bestiality that assails us every day, Obama will cite the Crusades, which happened centuries ago -- thus implying an equivalency. One can almost hear the banal schoolyard chant committed by children who respond by saying “[s]o and so did it too" as if that explains everything away. Another of Obama's favorite logical fallacies is that of oversimplification and exaggeration. Consequently, the actual causes for an event are massaged to the point where there is no longer a genuine, causal connection. Consequently, in Obama's worldview if Republicans would only agree with him, then everything would be better. Then there is the either/or false dilemma fallacy where "only two choices are presented yet more exist, or a spectrum of possible choices exists between two extremes." According to Obama, either we sign this not-so-terrific Iranian deal or we go to war. He has de facto eliminated other possibilities such as continuation of sanctions or making concrete non-negotiable demands. The most egregious is his claim that American sanctions were some of the toughest and they really did have an impact on Iran, when, in fact, he had actually opposed those very sanctions. The Jewish proverb that "a half-truth is a whole lie" surely describes Obama's moral stance. His whining about the nastiness of the [Iranian] pact's critics while at the same time being unwilling to own up to the toxic tone and insults that he has employed to pressure Congress to back the deal" is a constant theme. Regarding climate change/global warming, Richard Larsen asserts that Obama uses the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy which "confuses correlation with causation." Closely related to this is the "regression fallacy, which ascribes cause where none exists." This fallacy is created by failing to account for natural fluctuations in global temperatures or other factors such as solar activity.Obama and his ilk also employ the faulty generalization fallacy, where a broad generalization about climate change is concluded from weak premises, i.e., CO2 emissions hurt the environment. Moreover, led by Obama, global warming "alarmists also rely heavily on the Argumentum ad populum, also known as the bandwagon argument, where a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because many believe it to be so" notwithstanding the many scientific and credible challenges to their ideas. And the appeal to emotion ". . . compels us to be 'green' lest we destroy the earth." If we cannot identify and comprehend the onslaught of logical fallacies being employed, then we ignore the real agenda which is that of "controlling, regulating, and taxing human activity." Essentially, ObamaCare was a manipulation of peoples' emotions in order to initially induce them to accept a set of claims as being true. Americans were told they could keep their doctors and that health insurance premiums would go down. Anyone daring to expose the manipulations became an object of scorn and humiliation, via ad hominem attacks. Yet the Obama White House knowingly mischaracterized the healthcare plan. “More and more people, while hesitant to call the President of the United States a liar are concluding, based on all the available evidence [that one is hard pressed to reach] any other conclusion [.]" Obama is a pathological liar whether he engages in statistical fraud, i.e., the war on women, or claims in a 2007 speech that Congress did not assist New Orleans black residents during Hurricane Katrina. Yet, stunningly, Obama was one of only 14 senators who voted against the waiving of a provision that would have provided relief. He is a breathtaking hypocrite who projects his own worldview and claims his opponents are engaging in attacks, when, in fact, he is the one doing the attacking. Hence, he can condemn Afghans for releasing killers of Americans, but urges Israel to release Palestinian killers of Jews. Thus, he can decry racism, but continually "plays the race card in order to inflame racial tensions." From contortions of logic to outright lies, Obama continues to "infect the body politic." Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com