Slippery Slope (Redux) – FT#180

28 Aug Slippery Slope (Redux) – FT#180

Show Notes

The Slippery Slope fallacy is committed when a person assumes if one bad thing happens, then more, and often worse, bad things will inevitably follow. It is often applied to changes in the law that some groups are campaigning for, and others find distasteful.

It is fallacious because to accept the Slippery Slope argument, you must ignore the possibility that the single change will happen and then everything will calm down unless there is a genuine reason to call for further change.

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip of Trump talking about Biden’s Border:

Then we looked at this clip of Trump on the Second Amendment:

And finally we talked about this clip of Dan Bongino on vaccines:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about this clip of Kemi Badenoch on Woke Archeology:

He followed that up by talking about this clip of Nigel Farage on public smoking bans:

And he finished with Kemi again, this time talking about asylum seekers:

Fallacy in the Wild

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Winter Spring Summer and Fall:

Then we discussed this clip from Dawson’s Creek:

And we finished up with this clip from Man on the inside:

Fake News

Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:

Mark got it right this week, and is on 51%!

A Red Carpet for Putin is not a logical fallacy

We talked about Putin’s trip to Alaska where he was treated like a hero.

The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about

• You probably won’t be surprised to hear that we don’t have Cracker Barrel in the UK, and on my US trips I’ve stayed in big cities, so I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in the wild, but that’s not going to stop me weighing in on the latest culture war. In case you’re unaware, Cracker Barrel changed their logo to a more minimalist wordmark on a vaguely barrel-shaped background, from the previous, rather busy one featuring an old guy, a barrel, and the wordmark on… I don’t know, a stomach? What is that? Anyway, right-wingers lost their absolute shit, as is their wont. The removal of the old guy, you see, is woke. Yeah, I’m not sure why either, it’s not like they replaced him with a lesbian M&M in comfortable shoes. But he’s been there since the 70’s goddammit, and Republicans don’t like change, because if you change things, you might accidentally benefit people they hate. This change doesn’t benefit anybody, just to be clear. Nobody was calling for the cancellation of Uncle Herschel (the old guy in question). He’s not as far as I can tell, a Confederate General, a slave-owner or a racist caricature like Aunt Jemima. The real guy he’s maybe based on was born in Tennessee in 1915, so there’s a decent chance he was about as progressive as the average Fox News host, but that’s not why he’s gone. The fact is that the Cracker Barrel brand was built around vintage Americana and down-home Southern country cooking, and the regulars were exactly the kind of rural Americans who yearn for imaginary simpler times, so they skewed older and more Republican. That same group, who is now promising to boycott the chain because a plain logo hurts their fee-fees, were already not eating there in large enough numbers post COVID.  Having lost two thirds of their share price since 2021, and still struggling to make anywhere near their pre-COVID revenue, the company hoped that redecorating and rebranding might make them appeal to younger customers. Probably won’t work, but if they go broke, it won’t be because they went woke. It’ll be because they’re just not that relevant anymore.
• Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s superintendent for public instruction is instituting a new assessment for teachers relocating there from shall we say more ‘liberal’ states – New York and California initially, that “keeps away woke indoctrinators”.“We will not allow these leftists’ plans and schemes to take place here in Oklahoma,” Walters told CNN. “They are trying to warp the minds of our kids to turn them into social justice warriors, (heaven forbid that THAT should happen; going around ensuring that everyone gets justice in their societies – we got superheroes for that, and we know they all want to work for ICE these days so will definitely continue to vote Republican.  “Instead” he continues, they should be turning them into “kids that are getting the most of their god given talents to go get a good job, to go live a fulfilling life.” The implication is obviously that fighting for justice will not lead to a fulfilling life, which might explain why Ryan Walters is so unfulfilled and angry. Teachers transferring to Oklahoma must sit an assessment test developed by PragerU right-wing TV show host Denis Prager’s company that states “PragerU is not an accredited university, nor do we claim to be. We don’t offer degrees, but we do provide free educational content that promotes the American values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all ages”. Having a say in who can teach their shit rather than just providing the shit is somewhat of a “watershed moment” for the company, shifting it from just being an outside organization that provides materials to now having a say in certifying teachers. Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU said the Oklahoma superintendent had asked for a test “that is more wholesome and in line with the Oklahoma parent body.” You know there’s trouble as soon as the word wholesome appears “The test specifically evaluates educators on areas including their understanding of “American exceptionalism” and their “grasp of fundamental biological differences between boys and girls”. Of course on the sensible side of the aisle John Waldron, the Oklahoma Democratic Party chairman and a former social studies teacher, told CNN, “You don’t sign up to teach schools because you hate America, that’s not who’s teaching in our classrooms.” and characterised the assessment as a “loyalty test” from “an unaccredited agency” Sounds like the fundamental of Trumpland right there – and where better to indoctrinate the Young Pioneers to reductio ad Hitler Youth than in schools. Asked by CNN who will oversee and make sure that the assessments are being taken and passed, Walters said bluntly: “It’s up to me.” So a qualified educationalist no doubt.  Earlier this year the Department of Education worked with PragerU to create a new exhibit for the White House and videos shown as part of it concluded with the disclaimer that the partnership “does not constitute or imply U.S. Government or U.S. Department of Education endorsement of PragerU.” Yeah right, what did they teach you at school?
• A lot of shit gets talked about the Trump Administration’s approach to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, but if you actually take the time to listen to Trump officials, you’ll see that it’s not just racists, misogynists and homophobes hiding behind buzzwords to guarantee safe spaces for mediocre white men who can only function when surrounded entirely by other mediocre white men. It’s actually about meritocracy. Take the FBI, for example. Under Biden, so many highly qualified, strong, smart, noble, cis het white men were denied the chance to join America’s elite law enforcement agency because they insisted on hiring less qualified gay black and brown women instead, to fill some kind of diversity quota. As everyone knows, that kind of woke bullshit just puts American lives in danger, so under the strong leadership of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, all the leftist communist FBI agents who did the job they were hired to do by investigating January 6th have been purged, and another 5,000 unpatriotic employees who didn’t fancy working for conspiracist assholes accepted the early retirement offer from DOGE and will leave next month. That leaves plenty of space for the right kind of people. The only trouble is, it turns out there aren’t quite as many super-capable, experienced geniuses who missed out due to DEI as they thought, and the bureau is now planning to lower the job requirements, for example, eliminating the need for a college degree for agents, thereby allowing the FBI to draw recruits from other federal law enforcement agencies who previously wouldn’t have qualified. Because that’s how meritocracy works. In case you’re worried that loosening their standards threatens the FBI’s reputation and effectiveness, this shouldn’t concern you, because you should reserve that concern for the fact that due to the imminent loss of thousands of agents and the incompetence of their leaders, the new, ill-equipped rookies will be fast-tracked to full service after only eight weeks of training at Quantico instead of the traditional 18. In a parallel abandonment of quality control, dog-murdering DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced this month that anyone over 18 can now apply to join ICE, removing the previous age limits of 21 to 37 that prevented teenage racists and their middle-aged racist dads from bonding while abducting people from Home Depot parking lots in unmarked vans. Kristi claims they already have 80,000 applicants for the 10,000 vacancies they’re trying to fill, so the fact they’re now removing barriers to get more people to apply implies that barely any of those 80,000 meet the minimum requirements of the job which, as far as I can tell, are a complete lack of shame and the ability to complete an obstacle course quicker than Dean Cain. 
• I suppose we could take some comfort from the fact that when Bill Barr Donald Trump’s former attorney general, went on Fox News to praise his former boss for deciding to take over the District of Columbia’s police force. The Fox audience hated it. “Why did Fox just bring on TRAITOR Bill Barr?” fumed popular MAGA meme poster Gunther Eagleman. “He should be IN PRISON.” Just when we thought in-fighting was the exclusive domain of the left, it turns out that there’s a conspiracy in MAGA-world that Barr schemed with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and conservative pundit Armstrong Williams to hatch the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and eighteen other people. At the heart of the claims against Barr are some “reports” from undercover right-wing video operation Project Veritas. The sole source of the claims is Patrícia Lélis, a Brazilian national fugitive wanted by the FBI and last known to be hiding out in Mexico. Think of Lélis as being a sort of Brazilian Jacob Wohl or indeed a Brazilian George Santos and you wouldn’t be far wrong – notwithstanding George Santos comes from Brazil. Lélis alleges that as Armstrong Williams’s employee, she became privy to a scheme conceived by Barr to orchestrate Trump’s prosecutions. Ignoring the fact that Merrick Garland, not Bill Barr, was attorney general at the time, Lélis says that Barr secretly met with Jack Smith and Fani Willis to hatch plans to bring a RICO case against Trump and more than a dozen other defendants, which she described as Barr’s enemies list. The list she posted is obviously written by her, all loopy handwriting and exercise book, but despite that this is the woman who photoshopped a picture stolen from a Texas family’s social media account showing a woman with a newborn, slapping her face on the woman, to announce that she had had a baby herself, and that she’s been indicted for wire fraud, claiming she had duped several clients hoping to secure legal residency in the United States, and instead stole nearly $700,000 to spend it on her own house down payment, remodeling, and a credit card bill, Project Veritas claim “Barr has put the entire FBI after this woman to get the documents she has. We’ve found compelling evidence that appears to corroborate this.” Despite that Barr was out of office by the time Lélis started working for Williams, and the FBI didn’t start investigating her until years after that. Trevian Kutti, the ex-Kanye West publicist who actually was indicted as part of Willis’s election-fraud investigation, who initially embraced Lélis’s claims way back in December 2024 in social media posts, begged Project Veritas in an X post to realize that Lélis is “THE BIGGEST SCAMMER ON X.” And Armstrong Williams’ social media team, familiar with the out and out lying fraud Lélis is, exhorted Veritas to “Research her name,” “Like literally, type her name into Google.” You’d think that living as they do entirely online MAGA-lovers would simply do that, but as we are only too well aware MAGA are not the kinds of people to let facts get in the way of a good story, stand by for Lélis to feature in an upcoming documentary-shaped film by Dinesh D’Souza – we at Fallacious Towers can’t wait!!  
• In one of the least surprising examples of “the cruelty is the point” from the Trump administration, last week  the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo announcing that all federal employee health plans will be prohibited from covering gender-affirming care for both transgender youth and adults. This ultimately affects health benefits for more than 10 million federal workers and their family members, making it one of the largest rollbacks of transgender healthcare access in U.S. history. The only surprising thing about this is why it’s taken them this long, given what fucking monsters they are, and the reason for that is the June ruling by the US Supreme Court in United States vs Skrmetti, which dismissed the argument that banning gender affirming care is sex discrimination because the Tennessee law in question in that case was simply discriminating against anyone of any sex who was experiencing gender dysphoria. Thanks to that bullshit, the administration has decided it’s open season on gender-affirming care. I wish that was as bad as it gets, but the memo also mandates that “counseling services for possible or diagnosed gender dysphoria must still be covered. Covered counseling services must be provided by a licensed mental health provider and may include those who provide faith-based counseling”. That’s conversion therapy they’re talking about there. The new rule is that federal employee health plans must cover the cost of conversion therapy – a practice that is at least partially banned in 23 states due to the fact that it is actively harmful and increases the likelihood of suicide attempts by LGBT+ youth who are subjected to it by two and a half times. As Mark noted a few weeks ago, it’s getting harder and harder to end these headline segments with anything other than just the word “cunts”.
• The Trump Administration sent a letter to The Smithsonian Institution on Tuesday requesting a “comprehensive internal review” of eight of its museums: “This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” Trump’s March executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” directly criticized The Smithsonian for coming “under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” and for promoting “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” In the Orwellian Trump fiction-novel-made-fact world of course this is all doublespeak. The Smithsonian has an exhibition detailing the history of US presidents and of course includes information about Trump’s two impeachments. One senses that Trump doesn’t like that and as the head of the Ministry of Truth he gets to decide what Truth is. However Lisa Strong, a professor of art history at Georgetown University noted; “Museums cannot change content to suit a political whim or agenda. The best way for museums to maintain the high public trust they already enjoy is by remaining independent. Museums are staffed by experts in their fields who interpret the collection to help educate the public about art, history, science and culture. Their content should not be reviewed, revised, or edited for political gain.” and the Smithsonian said it is committed to ensuring that it remains “free from political or partisan influence. The Board of Regents will continue its vigilant, independent oversight of the Smithsonian and its museums to protect their rigorous scholarship and expertise, nonpartisanship, and accuracy, and ensure that the Smithsonian is welcoming to all Americans.” Of course the White House letter sets out a detailed list of materials the museums need to submit for White House appraisal, including grant-related documentation, inventories of permanent holdings and visitor surveys, and if NPR’s experience is anything to go by Trump has no interest whatsoever in independence or acting without fear or favour he is ALL about fear and favour and will cut funding just to suppress the stuff he doesn’t like! But in 2028 when he’s out of office we’ll look forward to the exhibition that adds Trump’s administration to the long list of fascist regimes that toppled partly because of the leader’s vanity but ultimately because of their inevitable mortality!
• Trump has found a replacement for Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics who he fired after she reported some labor statistics that made him look bad. The new guy is The Heritage Foundation’s chief economist and Project 2025 contributor, E.J. Antoni. As a frequent contributor to Fox News, NewsMax, and Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, who was also at the Capitol on January 6th, Antoni is uniquely qualified for the job, but only because the job Trump wants him to do does not involve producing accurate reports or impartially analyzing data. Harvard economist Jason Furman says “E.J. Antoni is completely unqualified to be BLS Commissioner. He is an extreme partisan and does not have any relevant experience”, but Furman was the chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, so that’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect him to say. Let’s find out what some conservative economists think. Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute told Axios that Antoni’s “work at Heritage has frequently included elementary errors or nonsensical choices that all bias his findings in the same partisan direction,”  Kyle Pomerleau, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute tweeted “There are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job. E.J. is not one of them,” and Kyle’s American Enterprise Institute colleague Dave Hebert said “I’ve been on several programs with him at this point and have been impressed by two things: his inability to understand basic economics and the speed with which he’s gone MAGA. From selectively presenting data from particularly convenient dates to misrepresenting axes to exaggerate magnitudes, he has used all the tricks in the book and shown time and again that he is not a credible source of information” In the interests of fairness, I should point out that while Antoni can be seen on video among the Trump supporters at the Capitol on January 6th an hour after the police barricades were breached, he claims that he was merely a bystander, who was in DC that day for totally non-Trump related work meetings, and he wandered over to the Capitol when he heard something was going on. He probably has an equally convincing explanation for the large multi-panel artwork of Nazi battleship the Bismarck that has pride of place in his office.
• Britpol – Union Jack and The Cross of St George flags have been appearing strung up on lampposts around the towns and cities hosting frightened and fleeing refugees, is this in celebration of the England Women’s Football team winning the European Championships? No of course not; it’s millionaires Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch mobilising the racist ignorant lumpen proletariat to do their job for them; distracting the populace from the Tory Party’s previously deliberate throttling of the asylum-claim processing service in order to create this crisis so they can tell the angry mob they are the only ones to solve the problem, and not Labour. Piss-pot Dictator Nigel Farage of Reform UK Limited is never one to miss a grift and is monetising, legitimising and fomenting racism cos his eye is on Number 10, secure in the knowledge that if you can create enough red mist to descend in front of the gammon voters they’ll forget all about how we all got duped by Boris Johnson mobilising disenfranchised northern voters to support Brexit. The very people that the Tory Party disenfranchised through restricting funding to their city councils, in order to shift blame onto the European Parliament rather than the Tory Government in sole pursuit of Boris thereby fulfilling his self-serving, selfish desire to be King of the World. It all worked out so very well last time folks I’m sure they’re not doing that this time!! Meanwhile to the soundtrack of The Who’s ‘Won’t get Fooled Again’ one enterprising yoof has been taking down the flags and re-selling them on eBay back to ‘patriots’ who hang them up on lampposts, and then he’s been taking them down and doing it again. Othering-based capitalism working across the class divide – levelling up minister and Boris’ co-conspirator Michael ‘Pob’ Gove would be proud!

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