{"id":13458,"date":"2026-04-06T06:00:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/?p=13458"},"modified":"2026-04-04T15:57:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T20:57:37","slug":"logical-fallacies-part-1-misdirection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/2026\/04\/06\/logical-fallacies-part-1-misdirection\/","title":{"rendered":"Logical Fallacies, Part 1: Misdirection"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nRonald Reagan loved telling Soviet jokes. One of his favorites went like this: An American and a Soviet citizen were comparing their countries. \u201cWe have freedom in the US,\u201d the American said. \u201cI can walk right up to the White House and shout \u2018Reagan sucks!\u2019 and no one will stop me.\u201d \u201cWe have the same freedom,\u201d the Soviet replied. \u201cI can walk right up to the Kremlin and shout \u2018Reagan sucks!\u2019 and no one will stop me either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reagan told that joke to Gorbachev\u2019s face at the Iceland summit. He told it to audiences for years. The punchline works because the Soviet citizen technically said something true while completely dodging the actual point. That\u2019s misdirection. And if you watched any coverage of the No Kings protests, you saw it everywhere.<\/p>\n

Fallacies of Misdirection are arguments that dodge the real point. They might sound like a response, but the actual argument has been quietly swapped for something else. These are the most common fallacies in political debate because they\u2019re the easiest to pull off. You don\u2019t need a counter-argument. You just need to make the real argument disappear.<\/p>\n

Straw Man<\/strong> \u2014 distorting someone\u2019s position into something easier to attack.<\/p>\n

Your neighbor says the city shouldn\u2019t spend $50 million on a new stadium while the roads are falling apart. At the next council meeting the mayor tells everyone your neighbor \u201chates sports and wants to kill youth athletics.\u201d Now your neighbor is defending something he never said, and nobody\u2019s talking about the roads.<\/p>\n

The No Kings protesters didn\u2019t argue that Trump\u2019s tariff policy was wrong, or that the Iran war was unjustified. Those require evidence. Instead they called him a fascist dictator (while freely protesting in 3,300 locations, on every network, with governors issuing statements of support). A Trump voter at the St. Paul rally told PBS the obvious: \u201cIt\u2019s perfectly safe to go out there and call Trump all the horrible names you want to call him, because he is not, in fact, a dictator.\u201d When reporters actually asked protesters what they meant, most couldn\u2019t explain it. Building a Straw Man is easier than building an argument.<\/p>\n

Is it a Straw Man? <\/em>He said the border needs more security. You say he wants to \u201cput kids in cages.\u201d Yes. He said the border needs more security. You say border security won\u2019t fix visa overstays. No \u2014 that\u2019s a counter-argument. That\u2019s just debate.<\/p>\n

Red Herring<\/strong> \u2014 introducing an irrelevant topic to divert attention from the actual argument.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re losing a debate about the speed limit on your street, so you bring up the fact that the other guy got a DUI in college. Has nothing to do with whether the speed limit should change, but now everyone\u2019s talking about the DUI.<\/p>\n

The No Kings protests started as anti-authoritarianism. By March 2026, the Newark rally demanded: impeach Trump, abolish ICE, release all Epstein files, end the Iran war, raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour, restore all DOGE cuts, rehire every fired federal worker, and impeach Justices Thomas and Alito. A $20 minimum wage is not an anti-tyranny position. It\u2019s a policy preference smuggled under an anti-authoritarian banner to borrow moral weight it hadn\u2019t earned. When you protest everything, you address nothing.<\/p>\n

Is it a Red Herring? <\/em>Someone argues against school vouchers by bringing up a teacher\u2019s divorce. Yes \u2014 irrelevant to the policy. Someone argues against school vouchers by citing test score data from voucher programs. No \u2014 that\u2019s relevant evidence.<\/p>\n

Tu Quoque<\/strong> \u2014 deflecting criticism by pointing at someone else instead of answering the charge. Latin for \u201cyou too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Your teenager gets caught skipping school. His defense: \u201cBut Jake skips all the time and you never say anything!\u201d Whether Jake skips or not doesn\u2019t change the fact that your kid skipped. He hasn\u2019t answered the charge. He\u2019s just pointed somewhere else.<\/p>\n

The No Kings protesters screamed about executive overreach. Where were they when Biden\u2019s vaccine mandate covering 80 million workers got struck down by the Supreme Court? Where were they when his student loan order got struck down too? No \u201cNo Kings\u201d marches. No \u201cdictator\u201d signs. The overreach was fine when their guy did it. Both sides play this game (some Establishment Republicans deflect criticism by pointing to Obama rather than defending the current policy on its merits). But the left\u2019s version right now is brazen because the courts already ruled that Biden overreached. They didn\u2019t care then.<\/p>\n

Is it Tu Quoque? <\/em>\u201cYou criticize my spending but you bought a boat last year!\u201d Yes \u2014 deflection, not defense. \u201cYou criticize my spending, and here\u2019s my budget showing I\u2019m under projection.\u201d No \u2014 that\u2019s answering the charge directly.<\/p>\n

Moving the Goalposts<\/strong> \u2014 changing the criteria after they\u2019ve been met.<\/p>\n

Your boss says you need to close ten deals to get the promotion. You close ten. Now he says you also need to bring in a new client. You do that. Now it\u2019s a \u201cculture fit\u201d issue. The target was never real.<\/p>\n

The original No Kings grievance was specific: Trump joked about being a \u201cdictator for a day,\u201d posted AI-generated videos of himself in a crown, and held a military parade on his birthday. By March 2026, \u201cacting like a king\u201d had expanded to cover tariffs, immigration enforcement, the Iran war, budget cuts, and workforce reductions. Those aren\u2019t evidence of tyranny. They\u2019re policy disagreements. The definition of \u201cking\u201d moved from \u201cclaims dictatorial power\u201d to \u201cdoes things we disagree with.\u201d That\u2019s not protest. That\u2019s a vocabulary trick.<\/p>\n

Is it Moving the Goalposts? <\/em>The standard for \u201csafe\u201d keeps changing every time you meet it. Yes. New evidence emerged that genuinely changes what counts as adequate. No \u2014 updating standards based on new data is just honest reasoning.<\/p>\n

Special Pleading<\/strong> \u2014 applying rules to everyone else while claiming an exception for yourself.<\/p>\n

A parent grounds their kid for lying, then tells an obvious lie right in front of them. The kid calls it out. The parent says \u201cThat\u2019s different. I\u2019m an adult.\u201d Same rule, selectively enforced.<\/p>\n

The 2020 BLM riots caused up to $2 billion in property damage, at least 25 deaths, and over 2,000 injured police officers. The vast majority of charges were dismissed. Then-Senator Harris promoted a bail fund that released people charged with murder and sexual assault. Compare that to January 6: defendants on non-violent charges held for months or years pretrial, some in solitary. Senator Rand Paul documented defendants held nearly a year without trial. Burn down a city block for our cause and it\u2019s free speech. Walk through the Capitol for the other cause and you lose your due process rights. Rules that only bind your opponents aren\u2019t rules. They\u2019re weapons.<\/p>\n

Is it Special Pleading? <\/em>\u201cProtests are free speech when we do it, insurrection when they do it.\u201d Yes. \u201cThese two situations differ because one involved property damage and the other targeted a government proceeding.\u201d No \u2014 that\u2019s a real distinction, even if you disagree with the conclusion.<\/p>\n

Every fallacy in this article does the same thing: it makes the real argument disappear. And at one of the No Kings rallies, a protester let the game slip. She told a reporter she was there to \u201copen up communication.\u201d A protest leader scolded her and told her not to talk to conservatives.<\/p>\n

Ask a conservative at a tax protest why they\u2019re there, and you get a specific answer in ten seconds. \u201cI don\u2019t like paying a third of my income in taxes and watching the government waste it.\u201d Nobody told them to say that. They thought about it.<\/p>\n

Ask a No Kings protester, and you get hemming and hawing and eventually \u201cI don\u2019t like answering questions.\u201d Somebody else did their thinking for them (and didn\u2019t do a very good job of it).<\/p>\n

Political ideologies that depend on blind obedience don\u2019t just tolerate logical fallacies. They need them. If the Followers start thinking clearly, they might stop following.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ronald Reagan loved telling Soviet jokes. One of his favorites went like this: An American and a Soviet citizen were comparing their countries. \u201cWe have freedom in the US,\u201d the American said. \u201cI can walk right up to the White House and shout \u2018Reagan sucks!\u2019 and no one will stop me.\u201d \u201cWe have the same … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13459,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13460,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13458\/revisions\/13460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}