Summary
In an emotional monologue, John Oliver urged undecided and reluctant voters to support Kamala Harris, emphasizing her policies on Medicare, reproductive rights, and poverty reduction.
Addressing frustrations over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy, he acknowledged the struggle for many voters yet cited voices like Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, who supports Harris despite reservations.
Oliver warned of the lasting consequences of a second Trump term, including potential Supreme Court shifts.
Oliver said voting for Harris would mean the world could laugh at this past week’s photo of an orange, gaping-mouthed Trump in a fluorescent vest and allow Americans to carry on with life without worrying about what he might do next.
I don’t think that’s an example. People housing others in their own homes isn’t an example of the perfect solution to homelessness. I don’t know if we have a name for that fallacy but it’s kind of a “put your money where your mouth is” fallacy. If you aren’t willing to give up a lot for the solution, you must not really believe it is a problem/solution.
People being against the ACA because it isn’t single payer health care is an example of the perfect solution fallacy. Or people being against a $15 minimum wage because it really should be $25 now.
It’s a bad faith argument and a strawman. They don’t actually think it’s reasonable for anyone to do that or think the other person is suggesting that. They are setting a person up as a hypocrite despite that obviously being an insufficient and inefficient solution to the housing crisis.
It’s also a false equivalence. The government helping to house people is absolutely not the same as private individuals sharing their homes.
Is this a “fallacy” or is it an “angle”? Probably it is little more than straw-man attack, because you know even homeless people need actual homes not just places to crash, and it is also a form of ad hominem attack that typically targets progressive/social change demands (do you really hear that often the opposite, like “if you hate homeless people that much, why don’t you support gassing them?”). I don’t know if people call those fallacies these days, I tend to see them as tactical conversational attacks. A fallacy is sth you can easily fool yourself with.
Well, fallacies originally were not meant to fool yourself, but to win argument by any means. So you are describing a fallacy, even if it’s not called that
Fallacy means sth in the effect of “cognitive illusion” as in “logical fallacy”, not a rhetorical strategy. The difference is the intent of the speaker. A rhetorical strategy can be deceptive, or tactically motivated, a logical fallacy is more like a form of apparent naivete and common paradoxes. When there is intent to deceive and/or win at all costs, there is “prevarication” or “sophistry” instead of “fallacy”.
You’re right, I mixed up sophistry and fallacy. Better check next time
it does have some qualities of Nirvana fallacy in that it implies my support for a policy is inadequate unless I provide a perfect, personal solution. but thanks for your response.