Ad Hominum

It is funny how we can look at something over and over again, and not see it for what it is.

I've been trying to figure out how I can best express my frustration with the labeling and "othering" that seems to be central to our social and political relations today. What I had completely missed is this othering is a particularly insidious form of ad hominum attack.

An ad hominum attack is an argument that attacks the person rather than the position. I don't want to call anyone out -- this pattern seems to be pervasive -- so let's say I feel kittens are destroying the fabric of our society. I might say that "Kittens are going to ruin our democracy. The kitten stance is that logic does not matter. The only way a kitten sees to achieve its ends is to manipulate you with cuteness. And worse, kittens will inevitably morph into household cat infestations, houses where the cat owns the couch because they claimed it first, and justice demands that your food must be shared equally with the cats without regard to their contributing nothing to the household income."

At first it seems we are laying out specific arguments against the kitten/cat position. In fact, as we cycle from label to accusation repeatedly, we set up a boogeyman that we tarnish with our first accusation, then we cycle back with our new boogeyman and use that to make our second accusation seem just slightly more sinister than our first. Now our boogeyman is a bit worse by association and we can cycle back and repeat.

We started with accusations and a label and we have iteratively generated an ad hominum argument that allows us to move forward with a fresh sense of outrage that frees us from the need to substantiate or explore our accusations. This is not an honest way to form an argument.

Sometimes when we make a point, we need to be clear about the party to whom the complaint attaches. (Although, trust in our readers suggests we do not always need to be explicit in that regard.) But if your case is made by repeated reference to the other, what you have telegraphed to me is that your logic is too unsupported to stand without a cheap ad hominum attack, and that you have not done the work that entitles you to call your opinion informed or requires of me that I treat your argument seriously.