A Field Guide to Bad Faith Arguments
Once you recognize these weak tactics in your mentions, you can easily outwit them
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I’ve moved my writing to Ghost in solidarity with Medium workers who faced union busting from their managers. You can find this article here.
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Bad faith arguments are common in politics. And while they’ve always been part of political culture, they’re much more rampant on social media. It’s easy to fall prey to bad faith arguments and waste time engaging someone on points that obscure rather than shed light on how we’re all affected by policy and politics.
So with that in mind, here’s a field guide for spotting and responding to bad faith arguments and staying focused on the real-world issues that matter.
What’s a bad faith argument?
The hallmark of a bad-faith argument is that it disguises the core point of a debate rather than addressing issues, beliefs, and values head-on.
Bad faith arguments aren’t “real” positions; they’re proxy positions people take for rhetorical purposes. In some cases, a bad faith position can be intentional. For instance, Sen. Mitch McConnell made up a “Biden rule” to justify stealing a Supreme Court seat. Instead of…
