Let us dissect one of the most common fallacies fiercely unleashed five years ago on a daily basis:
We will defeat this pandemic
The sentence, pronounced unrestrainedly by government officials and the news industry around the globe, and with particular intensity in the free world, comprises three fallacies. Three fallacies in five words may seem a little over the top, but so it is.
WE
Who is we? We is one of the words most frequently violated by professional fraudsters in their attempt to make as many people as possible believe that we are all equals. It is a way of saying I am your peer, we are all in the same boat. The patronizing we is a basic way of luring addressees into an imaginary club to which, needless to say, they do not belong. Of all the pronouns, we is the most deceptive of them all. We is a crack through which totalitarian collectivism seeps.
WILL
In this case the auxiliary verb will is used as a means to strengthen the strategy. Will stands for reassurance. Will means there is no room for doubts. A blatant illusion expressed with complete disregard for the truth. On 4 June 1940, when Winston Churchill had the task of explaining to the Commons an extraordinarily difficult situation he produced We shall fight of the beaches, an outstanding oratory piece. But then there was a real enemy and the actions that Churchill mentioned with elaborate flourishes were not only possible but a road to pursue in order to cauterize a potential invader.
DEFEAT THIS PANDEMIC
The formula gives the subject a fictional treatment, i.e., personification. The technical name for this rhetorical device since ancient Greece is prosopopoeia. As a literary figure, this specific trope bestows human quality on objects and beasts. Regularly used by political and media engines, prosopopeia appeals to the most basic emotions—argumentum ad passiones—in order to easily manipulate the recipients.
Appealing to emotion is a fallacy very common in politics and it serves as the basis for a large portion of modern advertising. Most political speeches are aimed at generating feelings in people so that these feelings will get them to act a certain way. When reason is not summoned then emotions take centre stage in a derelict intellect.
In a nutshell: No one can defeat a pandemic because it is not an actual enemy—neither an earthling, nor an extra-terrestrial. A real enemy is endowed with volition. A pandemic, as far as we understand, is not equipped with that faculty.
And all the rest is sheer ideology.
