23 Aug Appeal to Common Folk – FT#81
Show Notes
The Appeal to Common Folk is committed when someone tries to get the listeners to believe him by showing them what a regular guy he is.
Trump
We started out with Trump claiming he’s a blue collar worker:
We followed that with Trump claiming his followers are in fact super-elite, just like him:
Then we looked at this reply to an instagram post in which Don Jr professes his love for huntin’, fishin’, trucks and guns – just like every other red-blooded American.
Mark’s British Politics Corner
Mark talked about Nigel Farage – the embodiment of this fallacy, starting with this clip about his local pub:
And we heard this member of the Question Time audience calling him out, with receipts:
Mark wrapped up with this comedy song pointing out exactly what we’ve been saying about Farage all along:
Fallacy in the Wild
In the Fallacy in the wild we looked at this clip of the brilliant Phil Hartman as the unfrozen caveman lawyer on SNL:
Then we discussed this clip from Scrubs:
And we finished by talking about this clip from mark’s favorite cartoon, Barbie’s version of The Prince and the Pauper:
Fake News
Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:
- If I were an Indian, I’d sue! Sue them, Indians! What could be better, especially if you have a good team? It’s one of the greatest names, one of the most incredible logos, people loved it. They are going absolutely crazy in Ohio over the name change. Cleveland Guardians? What’s that all about?
- Now I hear the Chiefs are looking at changing their name. Everyone in the great state of Kansas – great people – they are, it’s true – are furious and hugely insulted, and so are all the Indians I know. Nobody wants this except the radical left, who will stop at nothing.
- They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness, but now the Washington Redskins & Cleveland Indians, two fabled sports franchises, look like they are going to be changing their names in order to be politically correct. Indians, like Elizabeth Warren, must be very angry right now!
Click below for the answer
Mark got it right this week, and is currently on 48%
Ivermectin is not a logical fallacy
We did a bit of a deep dive into the multiple, significant flaws in the main Ivermectin study that people point to when claiming it’s effective.
The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about
- Lumpy pillow salesman and less sexy Ron Jeremy, Mike Lindell, held his Cyber Symposium from August 10th to 12th, based on the belief that Trump would somehow magically be reinstated on August 13th. I’ve been a bit busy to be honest, haven’t really been paying attention to the news lately, but I don’t think that happened. I feel like I would have heard about that. Anyway, Mike was given a Trump signed MAGA hat by the President of Brazil… ‘s son Eduardo Bolsonaro. The event lasted 72 hours, and a good chunk of that was Lindell trying to pronounce Bolsonaro. Other large sections of time were taken up by replaying the same conspiracy filled documentary up to four times a day, which suggests to me that he thought there would be more questions after he presented his evidence. Like, he booked the room for 72 straight hours, but nobody had any follow up questions for his obvious lies, so… show a movie? Mike offered $5 million dollars to anyone who could prove his evidence was false, and when one cyber security expert pointed out that packet captures are in binary and whatever data he had was in hexadecimal so definitely wasn’t what he claimed it was, Mike withdrew the offer prize money. I like to think he is still sitting there, genuinely shocked that it didn’t work.
- I once went to Seville in Spain during an Easter break and found myself unintentionally caught up in the Semana Santa holy week parades. Gathered throngs of hooded men representing artisan guilds and women in widow’s weeds thronged the street and happily scooped me along as we followed effigies of the Virgin and Christ around the narrow streets towards the Cathedral. A magical, peaceful, friendly accident. This is pretty much what MAGA-hat-wearing Capitol-building-rioter Robert Reeder is using as his defence – well apart from the happy, peaceful, friendly bit. A good honest democrat supporter – it turns out – well so he says, he had heard this might be Trump’s last speech and just happened along “cos he had nothing better to do.” Hmm way to carve yourself into history Donnie! And before you know it your honour my client was an accidental tourist caught up with people “whose views he abhors,” And just like any inquisitive tourist shouting ‘Fight for Trump’ he accidentally breached the capitol building twice, boasted he battled the police and witnessed an officer being assaulted. ‘No, not my client, he didn’t care much for Trump and supported strongly the other guy, the opponent, yeah him, that one, Bernie-something was it?’ Of course like all good modern tourists he filmed himself doing all the things he said he didn’t do and probably now faces a six-month jail term. As Shaggy once said “zoinks Scoob”, no, ‘It wasn’t me!” – and we didn’t believe him either.
- In case you didn’t see, things have kicked off in Afghanistan. The Taliban took over basically the whole country in 11 days, and of course, Republicans are blaming Biden, conveniently ignoring the fact that Trump initiated the US withdrawal, saying in June “I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process. 21 years is enough. Don’t we think? 21 years. They couldn’t stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very tough to stop the process”. So he boasted less than two months ago that he’d made it basically impossible for Biden to stop, he praised Biden’s decision to move ahead with the withdrawal at the time, he negotiated the release of over 5000 Taliban fighters including Taliban leader Mullah Baradar, touted a historic peace agreement with the Taliban, which the RNC have deleted from their website this week, and is now calling for Biden’s impeachment because it turns out withdrawing has consequences. The weird thing is, in the fight to blame either Biden or Trump, George W. is getting away with murder.
- The touchstone, lodestar if you will, of dystopian imagery is Orwell’s 1984. An indictment of our post-war government’s coercion, as he saw it, of the public to go along with the building of their new vision for Britain. It remains a warning from history of the possibility of future totalitarianism. Referenced by skilled orators this could throw into sharp relief the power of the media in the hands of a malicious administration, in the hands of Republican representative Madison Cawthorne it makes of the GOP, stock marked ‘laughing’ yet again. It seems to be a trope trotted out by increasingly incompetent communicators attempting to do down the opposition, Don Jr and Lauren Boebert have already had a go this year claiming an Orwellian lack of free speech or that the only thing George got wrong was the date. Madison’s somewhat lamer contribution was to effectively file a book report like the kid who didn’t do the reading assignment. Stood in the front of the classroom represented by the whole of Twitter he blurted “1984 is a great fiction novel to read but it seems like it is becoming the reality we are currently living under more and more each day.” Hmmmm and Twitter laughed in his face remarking such things as “Fiction Novel?!” “I recall going to see the movie film at the local cinema picture house and then driving my automobile car to my house home afterwards.” Damn these guys are good at the comms talking speech”. When your own party’s ex-president doesn’t even know which way up to hold grasp a bible scripture in front of a chapel church it’s a wonder any of them can read at all let alone actually a whole entire story novel fiction tale.
- James O’Keefe, the right wing activist behind ironically named Project Veritas, is taking a break from misleadingly editing videos to star in a stage production of Oklahoma in Florida, alongside a cast of actors he claims are all ‘cancelled artists’ in an attempt to raise awareness about the effect cancel culture is having on the arts. True to form, this is bullshit, and as soon as Gawker started looking into it, several cast members said they hadn’t been cancelled at all for anything, while another talked about people trying to get her fired for being racist but not succeeding. Meanwhile, Brian Clowdus, the show’s producer, had been running his own production company for a year before accusations were made at his previous job about him being racist and harassing cast and crew members. So… not cancelled then. I guess billing it as a musical from a cast and crew of racist assholes who harass people doesn’t sell quite as well. Although it is Florida, so who knows?
- Just when we thought QAnoners could get no more crazy – do become a patron of the show and listen to us going through the Invitation to the Great Awakening mad box of frogs – they’re frustrated at the vacuum left by Ron Watkins as Q so the Anoners are looking to the Secret Queen of Canada (she isn’t) self-proclaimed HRH Queen Lady Romana Didulo (did you though?) she apparently replaced Queen Elizabeth (she didn’t) after she was executed for crimes against humanity (she wasn’t). But go no further that’s all the qualifications you need to be followed by Qanoners who then go and harass US Clinics and Walmart thru the mail holding them accountable for war crimes – well you know cos Covid. Apparently these heinous clinic criminals are violating various bits of the Nuremberg Code, The Geneva Convention, The United Nations Convention in getting people to wear masks, get vaccinated and generally care about one another. All make sense? No good cos that’s how you know you are sane! One Qanoner seems to be making it back from the dark side tho “I can get the word out about this and I can get a lot of people to do this,” wrote one fan. “But I need some proof that the military’s going to back this up. Give me some actual evidence that this will do something and I will blast it all over the internet.” Blimey you’re gonna get excommunicated talking like that ya heretic!
- In just a few days after school started in Florida, there are over 1800 confirmed Covid cases in a single school district, and 10000 students and staff are quarantined, leading that district, Hillsborough, and also Miami Dade, to hold emergency meetings and vote to defy Governor Ron DeSantis’s anti-mask mandate. DeSantis will now no doubt explore whether he gets to withhold the school board’s salary, or whether slavery might be illegal. Meanwhile, in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott, who is trying to out stupid DeSantis on mask mandates despite currently having Covid himself, is being schooled by the Paris Independent School District who found a loophole. And have simply added masks to their dress code. Hey, maybe there’s hope for the American education system after all.
- In the utter Britshow that is tiny-minded diminished Shitain this week whilst Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Dominic Raab, foreign secretary in the mold of previous holder of the post Boris Johnson, couldn’t be arsed to speak to representatives in Afghanistan who called for the UK help in evacuating local people who had worked for the British army as interpreters for the entirety of the 20 years they have been there. No cos he was far too busy sunning himself on the beach in Crete as the air-lifting of hundreds of Afghans was underway. But its alright cos one phone call wouldn’t have made a difference said the Defence secretary Ben Wallace well no you’re right cos it would mean nothing coming from the upholder of the UK’s inward looking xenophobic foriegn policy. Speaking of which, Priti Patel was wary of making too much noise about how much help we were giving to any Afghans fleeing for their lives and seeking asylum here for fear it might send the wrong message to other refugees. Brexit was hailed as giving us a chance to be a more globally active and respected country – yeah how’s that going when even Theresa May who fucked it up completely when in power by making Boris Foreign Secretary, tells the government to its face how much they’ve fucked it up. The problem’s not Brexit though it’s the bunch of power-crazed self-obsessed hoorays who are only in it for a fast buck for themselves and their mates and have no idea what it is to actually be responsible for anyone else anywhere outside of their seniors common room. The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history.
That’s all for this week, and thanks for listening!
