Survival in the Age of Personal Attack
How stupid are you? No, seriously, if you were to measure your stupidity objectively, how stupid would you say you are, on a scale from a human turnip (Baldrick from Blackadder) to the future’s mightiest supergenius (a tie between Reed Richards and Victor von Doom)? Also, would you say you’re ugly? Unqualified? Did you even get my pop culture references? Whatever your answers were on any of these counts, you’d be glad to hear that they don’t matter. You can has a good thought. You can speak good. Who one is doesn’t make them automatically wrong about anything. Anyone telling you otherwise — that your origin, appearance, identity, attitude, education, experience, or status disqualifies whatever you’re saying — is probably personally attacking you. Which would be a fallacy.
Flip it around, by saying that someone’s personal qualities automatically make them right, and it’s still a fallacy. The former is called ad hominem, the latter is called appeal to authority fallacy. These two are literally the simplest, most basic logical fallacies. Now, why is it, how is it, that everyone is using them today, constantly, all over all forms of popular media? In case I wasn’t being clear, I do mean everyone (figuratively).Starting with basic kindergarten-level insults, you get your high-ranking politicians in world’s superpowers, and all of their critics. Think of Trump saying anything about anyone, or of all the brilliant intellectuals who ever mentioned how tiny Trump’s hands are, or mocked his hair, or did an impression of him. Those are your basic appearance attacks. But hey, this is politics, right? Mudslinging is part of it. Well, we’re just getting started.
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