Some rhetorical strategies for defending indefensible things while being in a comfortable societal position
- Appeal to Inner Sanctum: members of a more elite community than you understand the problems with the indefensible thing but are esoterically avoiding public discussion of it. They are either already addressing the indefensible thing or have rationally concluded that doing so is impossible. Your concern regarding the indefensible thing is merely an artefact of your failure to master the esoteric discourse of this more elite community.
- Skill Issue: the reason you don’t like the indefensible thing is that you lack personal virtue. You should focus more on personal development and less on how the indefensible thing is bad.
- Appeal to Gentlemanly Virtue: it’s socially inappropriate in this setting to bring up the fact that this thing is indefensible. We’re all supposed to be on the same team here.
- Utopia-begging: if you don’t like the indefensible thing, you must be able to lay out a complete account of an alternative social order that has no flaws of its own. You must also have a complete account of how this social order could be realized. Only after producing both of these accounts may you criticize the indefensible thing or anything else.
- Appeal to Existential Angst: human beings are fallen creatures; everything has always been and always will be terrible. The indefensible thing is just another iteration of that, so it’s not a big deal.
- Hume’s Fork: because we’ve been successful in the past, we will continue to be successful in the future, therefore the indefensible thing is not a problem.
- Appeal to Ordinality of Sin: there is at least one thing in existence now that is worse than the indefensible thing, therefore the indefensible thing is not worthy of attention.
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