In "debate" on public fora, we very often observe a set of rhetorical frames or tactics that get reused a lot. A response to the notion that conservative organizations constitute an ongoing financial scam is countered by "Do you know how much the CEO of the Red Cross makes?" (Real example; I've muted the poster because I just can't afford to blow up any more.)
OK. So this "false equivalence" comes up a lot in this kind of discussion - it's OK for Republicans to do something because Democrats do it, too. This one's a little weird because the Red Cross is generally considered in a positive light by essentially everybody, but money skews things.
I'd like to catalog this kind of rhetorical tactic so that I could just link to it in this kind of exchange, saving me a lot of time and agony. Entries in this catalog should be dispassionate and sparse, showing as neutral a set of examples as possible.
I'm virtually positive this kind of catalog exists in multitudinous forms, so here would be a logical place to link to a few if I should ever get around to finding any.
Here's a paper, though: Equivalence and Issue Framing. Definitely related. Rhetoric.
False equivalence is what was used here - here's a list of other logical fallacies.
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