More Logical Fallacies

My brother had an online chat room or comments section argument with a guy he thought was a moron. He was frustrated by the exchange and described to me what the other guy said that he thought was shutting down the argument and playing the winning card, which was "You just don't like anything that Obama does, so no wonder you don't like health care."

He told me he accused the guy of circular logic, then went online to find support for his accusation and could not find any references to it. He asked for my help finding it.

Here's what I wrote back:

What you are describing is not circular logic, it's called an ad hominem attack, and embedded in it is a ad hominem attack.

Ad Hominem is when you attack the person, not what the person said or did, "You can't trust Obama because he's a socialist muslim" as opposed to: "You can't trust this health care reform because it is a giveaway to the insurance companies and doesn't protect the little guy"

Actually, that second one is my argument. A conservative would say that it hurts business, doesn't limit lawsuits, doesn't pay for itself, or is due to expand the deficit.

Circular reasoning may be what you have in mind. That's supporting a premise with a premise, and it's a logical fallacy too. For example, "You can't trust Obama because he's untrustworthy (someone would probably actually say a liar - but mine is an over obvious example)." This is not exactly what the person attacking the right winger by saying "you just don't like anything they do" is doing.

What is actually happening here is called a fallacy of relevance. In other words, so what if you don't like Obama? If you emotionally tend to hate everything Obama says, you might still rationally have valid reasons for not liking something specific that he did. Just like strong Obama supporters who are actually paying attention to the issues will occasionally find things he's doing that they don't support. We just lived through 8 years of this under Bush, and now that the leadership has turned over, people are using the same tired arguments that were used against them to the same effect.

Specifically, what you have addressed is probably more of a genetic fallacy. This is where someone would argue, "You're prejudiced against Obama, so everything you say is BS. This is in contrast to the opposite of an appeal to popularity (everyone likes it: so it must be true - the opposite is: everyone hates it, so it must be false).

In a way, the example you site is an accusation of biased authority. That's where you don't argue whether or not the person is knowledgeable, you just say they are biased, so the opinion they express is incorrect. Bias is enough to suspect the conclusions a person makes and double check them, but it's not enough to outright reject any opinion they express on a subject that they oppose.

None of this can be put into a chat room. Any argument with any hope of expressing the truth will be too long for the character limitations and minuscule attention spans of the twittering masses.

In reality, it's what always happens in chat rooms, people questioning each other's veracity and motives rather than arguing the issues. In my opinion, it is what right wing talk radio and Fox News are built on. Short on facts, long on emotion. It's a smoke screen that many of our elected officials try to get people lost in while they corruptly pilfer our pockets and mismanage the affairs of the country to enrich themselves.

The problem is, our elected officials rarely try to fix what is wrong with our country, regardless of whether it's popular or not. They usually try to win the next election, regardless of whether their actions are good for the country that elected them. They mistakenly (actually, it's only a mistake in ideal terms, in reality it works perfectly) believe that they must cater to their party machinery and big well-financed special interests in order to win elections. If we only voted based on a rational clear analysis of what officials did or say they are going to do, we would eventually get good professional politicians that would usher the country into a position of strong security where people were free, fulfilled, and prosperous. Good luck with that.