There's nothing like a good PHEPH to bolster your political predjudices.

Politicians are not the cause of our problems.  They are the symptoms.  Like professional wrestlers, their personas are highly polished to reflect an image.  Occasionally the authentic character of a politician leaks into view.  And that usually results in bad news for the politician.  (Think Richard Nixon or John Edwards) 

So the question is:  Why does the American voter fall for the same illusions every election cycle, which is pretty much every day.

As I’ve written before, American politics is like the WWE Smack down.  Shakespeare described it best in Macbeth, even though he was referring to life.  It’s full of “sound and fury signifying nothing”.  But like the professional wrestlers in the WWE, politicians and their propaganda teams, use certain techniques to convince us the sound and fury is real.  One of those is what I call the PHEPH pronounced “fef”.  

In Latin it’s the “post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.”  It means, “after this, therefore because of this.”  Here’s an example: it rained and it became very humid.  So the PHEPH is “it rained, it’s humid, therefore because of the rain it’s humid.”  Although it does happen this is not always true.  Sometimes after it rains the humidity goes down because cool fronts and high pressure areas can move the warm moist air away.       

Here’s a political example from care2.com:  “Texas Gov. Rick Perry really doesn’t like poor people. Not only is his administration shutting down the immensely successful Women’s Health Program as a way to defund Planned Parenthood, but Texas is also opting out of the Medicaid expansion and state health exchange under Obamacare.”  So the PHEPH is “because he’s shutting down certain facilities, he doesn’t like the people who use those facilities.”   

I’m not defending Mr. Perry’s actions or even assuming I know his motivations.  But there are several that could be far more appropriate; finances, state’s rights, consolidation, etc.  This is just another example of the sound and fury coming from the left titled the “Republican war on women.”

For instance, every time an action is taken or a law is passed or revoked that certain women consider antithetical to their interests, there is a war on women.  Never mind that there might be a hundred other legitimate reasons. 

And then of course there is Obama’s war on religion.  The law requires organizations owned by the Roman Catholic Church to provide conception drug coverage to all employees who want to use it.  The church  prohibits artificial contraception for its members on moral grounds.  Therefore it must be a war on religion.  By the way, provision of contraceptive drug coverage, doesn’t mean that Roman Catholics are required to buy and use these drugs.  Even though, the vast majority do.

Here’s two more with the help of information I found on factcheck.org:

Used by the Romney folks:  President Obama’s spending is an “inferno” or “binge” because he’s he was in office in 2009 when it happened.  The truth is that the nearly 18 percent spike in spending in fiscal 2009 — for which the president is sometimes blamed entirely — was mostly due to appropriations and policies that were already in place when Obama took office.

Here’s one from the Obama folks: “As governor of Massachusetts, Romney had “one of the worst economic records in the country.” The claim that job creation in Massachusetts “fell” to 47th under Romney. That’s a bit misleading. Massachusetts’ state ranking for job growth went from 50th the year before he took office, to 28th in his final year. It was 47^th when he left office but the trend was up.

Add PHEPH to our habit of motivated reasoning (believe “facts” we like and disbelieve “facts” we don’t like) and we have the witches’ brew we call politics.  But before you gulp it down, remember another Latin phrase: Caveat emptor – buyer beware.  And who said that Latin is a dead language?