Week 5 Discussion Response

When I think of fallacies and the arguments they encounter, my head immediately goes to those pesky commercials slamming politicians. As general election is fast approaching here in Wisconsin the mudslinging commercials are flooding in. There is a Lt. Governor by the name of Mandela Barnes (D) who is seen as the target in these commercials paid for by Senator Ron Johnson (R). The advertisement goes into explaining that Barnes needs to be taken out of office as he is single handedly destroying Wisconsin with his liberal behavior.  The argument involving his liberal behavior has to do with the criminal justice side of politics. Johnson leads the common viewer to believe the following actions Barnes is taking is going to create Wisconsin into a huge criminal lawless land. One of Johnsons’ strong points in the argument claims that ONCE Barnes joins “The Squad”, a democratic group consisting of six women, one action will lead into another. Once this action supposedly happens, they will start to defund the police. Johnson backs this statement up by claiming that Milwaukee’s crime rate is up by almost 100 percent. After this claim, he moves on to say that Barnes wants to abolish ICE, open our borders to illegal immigrants, and eliminate cash bail for inmates. Again, these assumptions about Barnes were not backed up by evidence not elaborated on. Johnson ends the mudslinging campaign ad stating he approves this message.