- Joined
- Nov 12, 2015
So rather than a long string of dubious arguments on the topic that overwhelms the opponent's ability to address them, you instead overwhelm them with mischaracterizations of the opponent's argument, which are more unbalancing due to their personal nature?
See the infamous "So you're saying-" meme and the laughable so-called debate it sprang from. When you can't win against the opponent's argument, recharacterize the argument into something else, hopefully something they'll be too afraid to argue against. This can be anywhere from simply forcing you to defend the most distasteful aspects of your stance (even if those aspects aren't actually harmful to anyone, just distasteful) to attempt to associate you with those aspects because you were willing to defend them, to inventing an extreme and highly unlikely scenario that you would of course look like a monster for opposing, to entirely and completely making up a whole different argument.
"I believe in free speech." "So you're saying you want people writing books about Nazis raping black women?"
"I oppose abortion." "So you're saying you want to force a six-year-old girl who was gang-raped by thirty-three Nazis to have her octuplets?"
"I don't think judges should legislate from the bench." "So you're saying you want the Nazis to establish the new reich?"