On Misapplied Truisms
Once you notice this in debate, you can never unnotice it again and it's unfortunately become a very common tactic in political discourse.
A misapplied truism is when someone says something completely self-evidently true that appears to be a response to someone else's argument but actually isn't.
A blatant example of this is when people say 'All lives matter,' in response to BLM. It's a truism because nobody can argue that all lives don't matter but the point here is that nobody has argued that all lives don't matter. BLM supporters argue that black lives matter too, not that white lives don't matter. As a misapplied truism, 'all lives matter,' pretends otherwise.
If you can't deal with your opponent's argument as it stands, a misapplied truism allows you to switch the point of contention onto something else by making your opponent's argument appear as something that it's not. It's a kind of straw-manning.
Sorry, but I am going to go there because this relates to Israel/Palestine. A lot.
"Israel has the right to defend itself." Nobody could disagree with a country wanting to defend itself. The real point of contention is whether Israel has the right to attack a city and kill 8,000 civilians (so far).
"Hamas and Netanyahu have both done bad things." Few disagree. Some on the Trumpian right like Netanyahu but almost literally nobody on the left actually supports Hamas. Defending the lives of Palestinian civilians implies no ideological support for Hamas at all, though there are great attempts to pretend otherwise.
Often people who use this technique are not even aware of it. It tells the truth in its own terms, but those terms are a lie.
A misapplied truism is when someone says something completely self-evidently true that appears to be a response to someone else's argument but actually isn't.
A blatant example of this is when people say 'All lives matter,' in response to BLM. It's a truism because nobody can argue that all lives don't matter but the point here is that nobody has argued that all lives don't matter. BLM supporters argue that black lives matter too, not that white lives don't matter. As a misapplied truism, 'all lives matter,' pretends otherwise.
If you can't deal with your opponent's argument as it stands, a misapplied truism allows you to switch the point of contention onto something else by making your opponent's argument appear as something that it's not. It's a kind of straw-manning.
Sorry, but I am going to go there because this relates to Israel/Palestine. A lot.
"Israel has the right to defend itself." Nobody could disagree with a country wanting to defend itself. The real point of contention is whether Israel has the right to attack a city and kill 8,000 civilians (so far).
"Hamas and Netanyahu have both done bad things." Few disagree. Some on the Trumpian right like Netanyahu but almost literally nobody on the left actually supports Hamas. Defending the lives of Palestinian civilians implies no ideological support for Hamas at all, though there are great attempts to pretend otherwise.
Often people who use this technique are not even aware of it. It tells the truth in its own terms, but those terms are a lie.
41-45, M
