I find it sadly “funny” that extremists don’t see themselves as extreme, whether Muslim, Christian, or political.
From Erick Erickson, the “most powerful conservative” in the country as deemed by Fox News — here is what passes for logic by this Tea Party Patriot:
A publisher published something that offended. It mocked, it offended, and it showed the fallacy of a religion. It angered.
So the terrorists decided they needed to publicly destroy and ruin the publisher in a way that would not only make that destruction a public spectacle, but do it so spectacularly that others would think twice before publishing or saying anything similar.
The terrorist wants to sow fear. The destruction of an individual is not just meant to be a tool of vengeance, but a tool of instruction. It shows others what will happen to them if they dare do the same. It is generates self-regulating peer pressure. Others, fearing the fall out, will being to self-police and self-regulate. They will silence others on behalf of the terrorists. Out of fear, they will drive the ideas from the public square and society will make them off limits.
It is not because the ideas are bad, but because the ideas offend a group that can destroy and tear down.
So when a publisher published something that mocked and offended a group prone to offense at such things, something had to happen.
The terrorists did what had to be done to publicly destroy and ruin the offender.
So they demanded the Mayor of Atlanta fire the Chief of the Fire Department for daring to write that his first duty was to “glory God” and that any sex outside of heterosexual marriage was a sin.
And the terrorists won in Atlanta.
Notice, he sets a powerful stage provided by the tragedy in Paris; he raises a specter of extremism and imposition of extreme views on a society. Then he points to a religious zealot in a public job trying to create what the Fire Chief believes is a righteous atmosphere and equates that to the monstrous picture he just painted.
The fallacy of false comparison is a type of logical fallacy that occurs when two things are compared as though they are similar, when in fact they are not. This type of fallacy is often used to make a point or argument seem more compelling by drawing a false analogy between two unrelated or very thinly related things. For example, comparing the actions of a religious zealot to the tragic events in Paris is an example of false comparison.
It illustrates perfectly how low the intellectual bar is. It is a manipulation of the audience by demagogues to detract from critical thinking. Critical thinking be damned — it’s for the “elite,” or at least people who don’t want to be conned.
This political leader is the same intellectual powerhouse that tweeted
Given how many people are raped in college, I’m amazed the President wants to send more people there.
Granted, he characterized this as a “joke” and told people who were shocked to “get over it.”
When a glass is jostled, whatever it is full of splashes out. This “leader” has no filter (or splash guard, as it were). And to dismiss a comment as a “joke” when really it supports a characterization he wants to make of someone (Obama), it’s insidiously funny. Insidious being the operative word here.
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Talking on the Think 