“Nobody’s perfect”

Of the many Straw Manning tactics in political discussion, one of the most annoying is when someone points out that ‘nobody is perfect’, after you state your reasons for rejecting a particular candidate that they approve of.

This rhetorical error is particularly irritating because very smart people fall for it.

Yeah, I know ; sounds like RussiaGate.

Preaching to you that “but nobody is perfect” is a way for the accuser to dismiss your preferences & values as an inability to compromise, rather than as legitimate factors in your decisions, same as everyone else.

And it’s totally unfounded.

Any candidate will likely have lots of flaws, from your vantage point. It’s inevitable that candidates (or family members or coworkers or other drivers for that matter), will do things that you don’t want them to do. We all know that. You get to decide for yourself, what are your minimum requirements for supporting them. You get to decide what’s important to you.

So let’s say your litmus tests for a supportable candidate are e.g.

1. They have to make an absolute, unconditional pledge to pardon all whistleblowers who are in trouble with the State.
2. They have to express an aversion to Executive Orders. They believe Executive Orders are UnDemocratic, and is a way of forcing their belief system on you & your fellow citizens. They refuse to try to pass any laws that the public seems to oppose, by & large.
3. They have to be steadfastly opposed to some particular program, e.g. the Trans-Pacific Partnership, in any form or name that program takes.
4. They have to be open, even if they don’t know how, to the idea that our survival depends on a complete overhaul of our economic system.

If the candidate passes those tests that are important to you, but their policies about Social Security and/or Free Education and/or Gun Ownership is different from your preferences, then it’s merely disappointing. It doesn’t have stop you from supporting that candidate, because those aren’t your key issues.

But the person who categorizes you as a ‘purist’ doesn’t WANT to know about your problems with the candidate. They pay attention to ONLY your minimum requirements, and they count ONLY those requirements to make their judgment about you.

They don’t want to know about your disagreements with your candidate, because then they would have to acknowledge that your mind is as flexible as theirs is, and that you genuinely disagree with THEM. In their minds, the only reason other people can’t see what they see, is because there is some deficiency with those other people. It can’t POSSIBLY be, that people can merely have different preferences or different values.

The accusation of being a purist because nobody is perfect, is vaccuous. It has no logical force, because it can be applied to anyone. You can accuse the accuser of being inflexible, by pointing out that YOUR chosen candidate has some agreeable traits, but hey nobody is perfect.

As soon as you hear someone tell you “But no candidate is perfect”, in response to your disagreement, call it quits and thank them for the talk. It’s not worth your time, and it leads nowhere.

No matter what kind of claims the “But nobody is perfect” folks might make that “It’s ok for anyone to disagree with me, that’s what Democracy/America/Peaceful Debates/Progress is all about”, they don’t really believe it. There’s something wrong with YOU, in some way or another, if you don’t see the world the way they do.