redirected from Main.Strawman
alt title(s): War On Straw; Strawman
A straw man argument is one based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To 'set up a straw man' or 'set up a straw man argument' is to describe a position that superficially resembles an opponent's actual view but is easier to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent.
Its name is derived from the practice of using straw men in combat training. In such training, a scarecrow is made in the image of the enemy with the single intent of attacking it. Such a target is, naturally, immobile and does not fight back, and is not as realistic to test skill against compared to a live and armed opponent. -
The Other Wiki
So, you want to bring up politics, or have
An Aesop, but can't bring yourself to fairly represent the other side of the argument? You
Did Not Do The Research about the other side's position, and hope to patch your argument with a little
dodgy logic?
Well, there's only one thing to do! Declare
War On Straw!
You too can fight against positions that would make an outside observer say
What An Idiot! Just don't fight anything that has any resemblance to reality, and you should win easily!
Some of the tropes here are not strawman every time they appear; for instance, a
Corrupt Church,
Animal Wrongs Group, or
Amoral Attorney can sometimes be used as a villain a la
Acceptable Targets without any (deliberate) intention of making a larger political statement. Sometimes the presence of non-corrupt/wrong/amoral versions in the setting is used to indicate that there's no hard feelings; on the other hand, sometimes those good versions are really a
Fox News Liberal used to try and make an actual strawman less obvious.
It is also important to note that
caricature, itself, can be a perfectly valid way to make an argument; Voltaire, Swift, and many other writers have used it effectively and incisively against their opponents. The distinction is that valid caricatures use exaggeration and hyperbole as rhetorical devices to present nonetheless legitimate arguments, exposing the victim's failings and flaws without misrepresenting them. But the line between the two can be extremely thin, especially in unskilled hands or when the author does not truly understand what they are trying to caricature; many authors have produced strawmen that were painfully obvious to others while believing themselves to be penning biting Swiftian satire.
The War On Straw has many fronts; among them are:
