Blogging Reflection

I have really enjoyed keeping my blog throughout the semester, especially since I have had a blog for five years now. I started blogging back in 2008 about political campaigns and I continue to blog about them to this day. I even started another blog in 2010 called "Marin Hikes" which talked about good hikes in Marin County in the Bay Area where I live. While I stopped blogging about hiking in Marin, I still continue to blog about political races.

I found blogging in Writ 140 to be a slightly different experience however. For Writ 140, I had to do assignments instead of free work so I was more focused in my responses to the blog prompts. It also taught me about how I can work on my audience. For example, my blogposts used to be too long so it would be difficult for people to read them. I also realized how I need to keep my blogposts simple so people are not confused.

Overall, what I learned is that my blogging is good but definitely can be improved. This work may inspire me to do other blogging, including a blog about life at USC, an online diary basically that I would update once a week. Maybe I should even think about a Vlog on Youtube.

Logical Fallacy #2: Appeal to Fear

While known under many names including ad baculum and fear mongering, the appeal to fear is a well known scare tactic used in arguments. There is a difference between fear mongering and actual fear. For example, actual fear would be person A telling person B , "Do not lie down in the middle of Highway 405 at 1am, someone could drive over you," because the fear is not a threat but more of a likely result of lying down in the middle of Highway 405 at 1am.

An example of the appeal to fear is the Willie Horton ad used in the 1988 Presidential campaign by George H.W. Bush (R) against Democratic opponent Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis (D). Before this ad, Dukakis was leading in the polls. This ad talked about Willie Horton who committed violent crimes in Massachusetts under a furlough program Massachusetts had even though Dukakis himself had not created the program. This ad was meant to scare people by associating Horton with Dukakis. The ad worked by erasing Dukakis's lead in the polls.

Another example of fear mongering is the "Daisy" ad. This ad was used in the 1964 Presidential campaign between President Lyndon Johnson (D) and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater (R). Johnson released this ad called "Daisy" which had a little girl picking flowers and then a nuclear bomb exploded and the ad suggested that Johnson would be the best one to protect the United States from a nuclear bomb explosion. This ad's main job was to scare people into voting for Johnson instead of focusing on the issues themselves. The ad helped Johnson too, he won with about 60% of the vote.

Logical Fallacy Ad Hominem

One of the most widely used and famous logical fallacies is the ad hominem argument. What is the ad hominem argument? It is when person A tries to win the argument by attacking person B's personal life instead of attacking the points that person B made.

For example, 

Person A: "Person B's argument that the Yankees are better than the Red Sox is invalid because Person B lives in New York and would obviously be biased toward the Yankees." 

This argument style is extremely common in the political sphere with elections. An example of this argument is the swift boat ads of 2004 where Bush attacked Senator John Kerry (D) for Kerry's service to the country during the Vietnam War.  Bush said that since Kerry's service in the Vietnam War was not as strong as made out to be, then Kerry should not be President. These swift boat ads stayed away from the issues and attacked Kerry on defense making him seem unqualified to lead the country with foreign policy issues.