We’re already being forced to deal with election season nonsense. Instead of catching up on the latest Donald Trump fluff in the news, we’re going to look at some common logical fallacies used and abused by politicians.
Causal Flaws
Causal flaws abound in political reasoning. For example, a state will pass some expensive piece of tough-on-crime legislation, and then point to the fact that crime rates went down in the following years as justification.
However, just because Thing One happened before Thing Two, it doesn’t mean that Thing One caused Thing Two. Thing Two might have happened anyway. Crime rates may be plummeting in many similar states that have no analogous tough-on-crime legislation. That’s an instance of the effect without the purported cause.