I took a course in Logic in college as part of the Philosophy curriculum. Several years later I encountered, for the first time, someone steeped in the New World Order and Zionism conspiracy theories. He gave me a copy of a magazine article describing said theories and how Jews controlled Hollywood and TV. It was, to say the least anti-Semitic. I was flabbergasted.

I went looking for my text book and couldn’t find it. With great difficulty, I found one at a local library and took 40 pages of notes.
The copied article was about five pages and littered with flaws. There wasn’t enough room in the margins to write in my rebuttals, so I gave them footnote numbers corresponding to four pages of individual rebuttals on legal pad paper.
I returned the article with my notes to him, and a few days later he commented. “Why are you attacking me?”
“Because it’s crap.” I said and never brought the subject up again.

How’s that saying go? “You can’t fix stupid.”

Then along came the 2016 Presidential campaign and a lot of crap started showing up on my Facebook News Feeds from some of my friends. I’m not making this up, it was one-sided.
Trump supporters were attacking Hillary, Obama, Democrats, immigrants, Muslims and anything deemed liberal.
Needless to say, after Trump was elected, it didn’t let up. One by one I dropped these friends, and was myself unfriended because I called Trump a racist – the fact of which can be inferred by a study of his well-documented actions and public comments.
I often used links to reliable sources which contradicted any so-called facts presented in their arguments – flimsy as they were. These links to truth were often attacked as “fake news” which is in and of itself a fallacy of Ad hominem – attack the messenger.

A side note: in an interview with CBS’ Leslie Stahl, Trump was asked why he attacks the media. He replied that if he can attack the media enough, the people won’t believe them when they print the truth. Let that sink in.
I’ve kept a couple of FB friends who from time to time post something that is flawed, but are not vicious attacks. A lot of their stuff is just in good fun.

There is one friend who is a staunch Trump supporter and is now going down the voter fraud road. I keep him as a friend to keep him honest. He’s usually silent after I comment with numerous legitimate fact check sources such as Politifact, Factcheck.org, Reuters and only Snopes as a last resort. The reason being that some right-wingers believe Snopes is owned and operated by George Soros (FALSE) who is himself a target.
The common fallacies I see in these people’s specious arguments are:

False equivalence – coronavirus is the same as the flu.
Strawman – all Democrats want open borders for illegal immigrants to enter.
Fallacy of generalization – All Haitians have AIDS, which is a claim reportedly made by Trump.

And now this: Republican Senator Josh Hawley (R) MO has declared his intent to challenge the Electoral College votes of swing states in Congress on Jan 6 which will prolong the inevitable – Biden won, but not after hours of needless debate by both houses. Sen. Ted Cruz (R) TX has recruited eleven other Senators to join in on this national embarrassment.
The Senators collectively have issued this statement:

“Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed…By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.”

DISPUTED? FYI, actual cases of mail-in voter fraud in particular is less than 1/100000 of one per cent. Written out that’s .00001%.
But the real gem in this statement is the last sentence: “allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.”
EXCEED, LIFETIMES? According to whom? According to none other than Trump himself who has claimed rigged elections since 2016. There hasn’t been a day gone by that Trump hasn’t ranted about fraud and a stolen election. It’s gotten sickening.

What this claim is saying is that there is fraud in the election because Trump says there is fraud in the election – with absolutely NO evidence. That’s called circular reasoning and is a fallacy.

What’s even more stupefying is that this is coming from US Senators, who are supposedly, with the exception of Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville, educated men. Even Cruz should know better because he clerked for William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States.

But hey, these chicken-shit Republicans are more worried about Trump supporters than they are for their duty to defend the Constitution. Which brings this to flash cards.
Appearing on my FB News Feed is a sponsored post from The School For Thought which says, “Get a deck of Critical Thinking Cards featuring 24 common fallacies, 24 cognitive biases, plus 3 game cards and 3 call out cards. Perfect for calling out dodgy logic or just throwing at the world in abject despair.”

https://thethinkingshop.org/products/critical-thinking-cards-deck

At one point it asked for comments to which I said,