I demand a recount!

Something that I repeat to writing students is "no claims without support." I consistently encounter writers who seem quite comfortable writing things like, "Ted Lasso was the best new series of 2020," followed by... nothing.

The claim may be true -- and I agree that "Ted Lasso" was the best TV series of the past year -- but without any evidence this is not a persuasive argument. Analysis and description and comparisons would need to be added to make that initial claim persuasive. It can be as simple as adding "for example" after the initial claim.

There is a related truth about writing (and thinking), which is, "Unserious claims make the writer look unserious."

That is my shorthand version of something called "Russell's Teapot." Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher who came up with this analogy while making an argument about religion. Some find flaws in his arguments about the existence of God. But the basic point of his analogy is taught in introduction to philosophy classes.

In a nutshell: Imagine claiming that there's a tiny teapot -- too small to be seen by telescopes -- orbiting the sun. It would be very difficult or impossible to prove you wrong. But the default assumption should NOT be that the teapot exists. It's not up to other people to prove you wrong; it's up to YOU to offer credible evidence before the claim is taken seriously.

We see what happens when a claim that contains no proof becomes the basis for an entire political party in our ongoing national "debate" over whether President Biden really won the election. The wacky Arizona recount of Maricopa County's votes is the most recent specific example.

Many Republican officials are arguing that since many Republican voters don't have much faith in the presidential election results, OF COURSE we need tighter voting laws and more recounts. The "unserious" part of this is that those very people were fed a steady series of lies by the former president and his various supportive cult media networks. All evidence points to the results being accurate.

It amounts to circular logic, which is a fallacy but one that is difficult to correct when so many Americans accept an initial unsupported claim. It's tough to argue against something that is made up.

A nutty conspiracy theory is about the Covid vaccine containing tiny microchips -- perhaps too small for detection -- allowing Bill Gates to... something? Therefore, you'd be crazy to get a vaccine. If you are a person willing to accept that initial lie, then what follows is compelling.

Emotion being so powerful make me wonder if there is any way out of this downward spiraling logical nightmare.