https://gfile.thedispatch.com/p/donald-trumps-megaphone
During the Trump years a lot of people found safe harbor in changing the subject or playing tu quoque
games. It only makes sense. If you can’t defend something indefensible,
bring up something the other side did that’s not defensible either and
talk about that. To any inconvenient charge or fact about Trump, his
defenders would respond, “What about …?” the Democrats, Antifa, Hillary,
the New York Times, Barack Obama, Hunter Biden, the designated hitter rule, whatever.
There
are three chief advantages to such rhetorical tactics. First, we live
in an idiotic age where people believe that the alleged hypocrisy of a
critic nullifies the merit of criticism. A parent who smokes is a
hypocrite for telling his kid not to smoke—but that doesn’t mean the kid
should therefore smoke.
Second, it’s what the audience wants to
hear. And no “principle” explains cable news opinion shows more than
“the customer is always right.” The Fox audience craved permission to be
saved from its own cognitive dissonance and whataboutism as an exit
ramp from having to confront the actual facts.
Finally, it lets
you avoid explicitly lying. You just don’t answer the question that
matters by pointing out the flaws of the other team.
The problem,
at least for me, is that if you follow this approach too long you’ll
eventually become complicit in a larger deceit. And that’s where the lie
by omission comes in.
