You Slimy Bastard!
* From “The A**HOLE’S Guide To Arguing (Or, How To Succeed In Politics)”
Ad hominem. You have probably heard the term before. Most likely you have also had the ad hominem used against you, or done the same to others.
“You can’t put a Mormon in the White House. They’re polygamists. Do you know what that means? They have more than one wife. We can’t have a guy in charge who has 13 wives. Seriously. Do you want a First Harem instead of a First Lady? A whore house instead of the White House?”
“Oh, you all know what redheads are like. You can’t put her in charge. And if you don’t think that’s bad, just wait until she gets her period.”
“He’s a bleeding heart liberal. What more do you need to know? Do I really have to spell it out for ya? C.O.M.M.I.E. Goddamned pot-smoking hippie.”
“How can you even take that guy seriously. I mean, just look at him. He’s got a face like a dog’s dinner, his tie is crooked, and by God so are his politics, and he stinks. You can’t put that guy in the Oval Office. They’ll rename it the Oval Orifice cause you put a stinkin’ asshole in there.”
Ad hominem arguments often make use of caricatures, common myths and misconceptions.
If you hear someone being labelled as a ‘redhead’ or a ‘bleeding heart liberal’, chances are you immediately form some impression about them, which may or may not be accurate.
Any word or description that carries a lot of cultural baggage will tend to show up in these types of arguments. Sometimes that one label is all you need to discredit the opposition.
Call the opponent a Satanist, feminist, Muslim, commie and so on, and that may be all you need to say to convince those who share your prejudices that the opponent is less competent, moral and worthy than you. Share on XIf someone does this to you during an argument it is usually because they have nothing useful or intelligent to say. They do not know how to refute your argument in a way that makes them look good, or that makes you look less competent. So instead they resort to lowlife tactics such as the ad hominem.
It is the debate equivalent of hitting someone over the head and calling them stupid for disagreeing with you. You know – what kids do in kindergarten.
There is both an upside and a downside to being on the receiving end of this.
The upside is that your opponent is admitting defeat. You have just found a weak spot, a chink in their armour.
This is a button you can push, and should push repeatedly, until it becomes apparent to everyone that your opponent does not have the faintest idea of what they are talking about.
The downside is that mud sticks. Unless your name is Teflon, some of that shit, regardless of whether you have earned it or not, will stick to you. That is why politicians love the ad hominem. It distracts the audience from their own incompetence and smears the opponent at the same time.
The most annoying type of ad hominem is one that can not be refuted.
Not because it is true, but because it would be impossible to prove otherwise. After all, how do you prove that something is not? Try it. Try proving that Santa, unicorns and Cthulhu does not exist.
In one of his 2012 presidential campaign ads ‘Obama Attack Machine’, Mitt Romney accused his opponent Obama of wanting to kill him, asking that the voters help him ‘fight back’.
It is pure character assassination, and as usual with ad hominem there is not a shred of evidence to back it up. But then proof is not necessary here. Ad hominem works best without proof, for proofs can be disputed. But how do you argue with air?
You don’t.
© Merlyn Gabriel Miller
