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  3. Ever hear of the lemming (旅鼠)? Lemmings are arctic rat-like animals with a very odd habit: periodically, for unknown reasons, th

Ever hear of the lemming (旅鼠)? Lemmings are arctic rat-like animals with a very odd habit: periodically, for unknown reasons, th

admin2013-04-15  40
问题      Ever hear of the lemming (旅鼠)? Lemmings are arctic rat-like animals with a very odd habit: periodically, for unknown reasons, they mass together in large herd and commit suicide by rushing in- to deep water and drowning themselves. They all nm in together, blindly, and not one of them ever seems to stop and ask, "Why am I doing this? Is this really what I want to do?" and thus save itself from destruction. Obviously, lemmings are driven to perform their strange suicide rites by common instinct. People chose to" follow the herd", for more complex reasons, yet we are still too often the unwilling victims of the bandwagon appeal.
     Essentially, the bandwagon urges us to an action or an opinion because it is popular-for "everyone else is doing it". This call to" get on the bandwagon" appeals to the strong desire in most of us to be one of the crowd, not to be left out or done. Advertising makes extensive use of the bandwagon appeal, but so do politicians. Senator Yakalot uses the bandwagon appeal when he says "More and more citizens are rallying to my cause everyday", and asks his audience to "join them-and me-our fight for America".
     One of the ways we can see the bandwagon appeal at work is in the overwhelming success of various fashions and trends, which capture the interest ( and the money) of thousands of people for a short time, then disappear suddenly and completely. For a year or two in the 1950s every child in North America wanted a coonskin (浣熊皮) cap so that they could be like Davy Crockett; no one wanted to be left out. After that there was the hula-hoop craze that helped to dislocate thousands of Americans.
     The problem here is obvious: just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t mean that we should too. Group approval does not approve that something is true or is worth doing. Large numbers of people have supported actions we now condemn. Just a generation ago, Hitler and Mussolini rose to absolute and destructive rule in two of the most cultured countries of Europe. When they came into power they won by massive popular support from millions of people who didn’t want to be "left out" at a great historical moment.
     As we have seen, propaganda can appeal to us by arousing our emotions or distracting our attention from the real issues at hand. But there’s third way that propaganda can be put to work against us-by the use of faulty logic. This approach is really subtler than the other two because it gives the appearance of reasonable, fair argument. It is only when we look more closely that the holes in the logic fiber show up.  
The writer cites the mass suicide of lemmings in order to ______.
选项 A、raise public awareness
B、support his point of view
C、justify bandwagon appeal
D、discredit their habit
答案B
解析 推断题，论说性质的文章中所举的例子通常都是为了支持作者的论点，而旅鼠盲目群集致死与人们的盲目从众心理也确实颇为相像，故选B项。
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