Question #2

I thought the idea of wishful thinking was interesting, because I didn’t realize that it would fall into the category of an appeal to emotion. I guess I thought of it as a kind of self-justification. I think a lot of people use wishful thinking today to try to justify their actions to themselves or to others. With the election season coming up, I’m sure there will be a lot more ads that use wishful thinking as an appeal to emotion. For example, I heard one on the radio the other day that talked about how great California was, and how we can get it back that way if we elect a particular candidate. This struck me as a type of wishful thinking, as an appeal to the voter’s sense of nostalgia. Just because someone wants things to be a certain way, doesn’t mean that they will be. As a state, California is always changing and adapting, so it can’t go back to the way it was. It is possible to move things forward with good policies and government, but to want it to return to some unrealistic previous version just seemed ridiculous.