Responding to a charge by making a countercharge, or a tu quoque is the term for when someone responds to a claim by pointing to another claim which seeks to nullify or normalize the original charge. The textbook provides an example of a university professor charged with using funds to lavishly redecorate his office; his countercharge is to make salient that the attorney general (who asserted the original charge) just spend significant money for a new door into her office. The Recent statement Trump made about the Saudi government, which made public the USA's (quietly held) 30 year tradition of exempting the Saudi government from human rights abuses because they are a clever economic ally in the Middle East, made the left furious. Conservative commentators made the point that Obama too was guilty of turning a blind eye to the Saudi Arabia government. The erroneous argument made by the right in response to left's back lash fails to address the issue at hand. However, it does dull the significance of Trump's actions because the fury coming from the left can be more easily criticized as being partisan as opposed to virtuous. By making known that the Obama administration is guilty of acting (but not saying it outright) in a similar way towards Saudi Arabia, (being lenient in regards to their human rights abuses), the political right's countercharge is effective, especially to those who already support Trump. There is much of this sort of argument style in current politics. A new term for it is "what aboutism" whereby the accused (party or candidate) points to an aspect of the opposing side's behavior which mimics the injunctive act or statement. I find this argument strategy to unveil partisanship, and augment furiousness, but I think it does little to exempt the accused from their actions.
There were a couple of terms I found in this chapter that I wish were explained a little more. First, the concept of uncritical responses to refutation is only covered briefly. I think that this is one of the most fundamental barriers to effective public argumentation in the United States right now. I find this issue most concerning for the liberal party. Recalling the last election and the concept of 'incremental' argumentation, I feel that people demonstrated a massive failure of critical thinking by voting for third parties or not voting. People who were disappointed with Hillary Clinton's candidacy in place of Bernie Sanders decided to either continue voting for Bernie or not vote altogether. Neither of these strategies amounted to effective support of their cause, and they constitute the uncritical "knee-jerk" reaction described in this chapter. In this case, uncritical response to opposition worked directly against the interests of the decision-makers. A...
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