The following is a direct quote from Dan Rather's Facebook post today, referring to the deaths around the demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia.
"What has unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia today is a national tragedy fueled by bigotry, white nationalism, and home grown terrorism.
Freedom of speech is not a license for the incitement of violence. And the neo-Nazis and KKK members who gathered are anathema to everything this country should stand for.
For too long President Trump was silent. But when he did speak his refusal to call out the hatred for what it is, and his general message of false equivalence was disgusting and counterproductive.
[Said Trump:] 'This egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.'
That's a dangerous misrepresentation of history from a politician who has bigotry as a large part of his base. All decent Americans of all political persuasions cannot allow these actions to remain unchallenged - both the hatred on display in Charlottesville and the rhetoric of the President."
(Emphasis mine.)The term I was floundering around trying to say during a phone conversation this morning was "false equivalence." That would also apply to the example I gave of the bicycle incident where someone put up the sign that said "peace on the streets" where the bicyclist blew the stop sign and the motorist was simply unlucky enough to not notice him coming, and/or not expect him to break the law.
Again, the idea of false equivalence--a car hits a bike, so surely each party must have been at least partly at fault. Maybe that's true sometimes, but when it is not, the statement implying equivalence is false and, it seems at least in the example of Trump's statement, engineered specifically to divert blame away from the party(s) to which it rightfully should be assigned.
I think it's worth the effort to find and label these logical fallacies and manipulations, to help defuse them.
Right.
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