From an article by lecturer David Tollerton, in today's Guardian opining on potential victims of a Trump presidency:
"Yet, as I sit with a stack of essays in front of me, the victim whose pain I feel for most immediately is the practice of logical, reasoned argument itself.
Statements issued by the Trump campaign saw no need to uphold any requirements to make sense or be based on evidence. Consider the assertions of widespread voter-fraud (in the case of Clinton victory), claims of Muslims celebrating 9/11 in New York, the idea to extract Middle Eastern oil as recompense for US military costs, the theory that climate change was secretly invented by the Chinese for economic gain, or that Mexico would willingly pay for a border wall.
Such statements, and an array of others, were credible within the campaign’s own inner logic because the criteria for credibility did not include a basis in reality or even coherence. Under the banner “Make America Great Again” the type of argumentation I have been demanding of my students became defunct".
https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2016/nov/15/in-the-age-of-trump-why-bother-teaching-students-to-argue-logically?CMP=fb_gu