Cults usually have harmful intentions. Politics aside, would that fit a group of people that:
Supported and vehemently pushed for the at will mass murdering of a specific group of individuals in a populace?
Advocated for and financially supported the bodily mutilation of mentally ill individuals, even to allow minors to hide it from their parents.
I started to go on about the support of a mentally incompetent person for president and then accuse maga supporters of the same, policies that have caused an economic disaster, policies that allowed thousands of people to invade our country illegally and then shipped them to places to change the voting populace of swing states. But I'll stick to the first two points because they are pure evil and the others can be debated.
This is not debate. This is intellectual dishonesty, which may be the worst brand. Or it could be even worse: that this is
not intellectual dishonesty and you actually just don't have a clue what you're doing rhetorically. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that it is intellectual dishonesty, though.
I'm going to define and explain several (though not all) of the logical fallacies your response is guilty of, not only for your enlightenment, but also so that you know why these types of arguments can't be taken very seriously as intellectual discourse.
Straw man fallacy: You oversimplify the opposing views to make them easier to attack. Textbook, as pointed out by Veer2Eternity.
Equivocation fallacy: Knowing that I wasn't using the same definition of
cult as you were attempting to straw man me into, you persisted in using that definition because it fit your argument.
Loaded language/Appeal to fear: When you use words like "Mass murdering," "bodily mutilation," "economic disaster," and "pure evil," you are clearly trying to cause an emotional reaction, like fear, (or are expressing your feelings rather than dispassionate arguments) rather than attempting to foster an rational, reasoned discussion.
Slippery slope: When you say "policies that allowed thousands of people to invade our country illegally," you assume a chain reaction of events without giving specific evidence of a causal link. It implies a catastrophic outcome (e.g., changing the voting populace of swing states) without substantiating how these events are connected causally.
In using these fallacies, you avoid engaging in a reasoned, evidence-based discussion and instead appeal to emotion, fear, and oversimplification to persuade or provoke. These fallacious methods of argument are convincing to a lot of people, maybe even most people, and in that way, they are effective (though not intellectually honest). Politicians of all stripes use these fallacies constantly, which we rightly criticize them for. But when we turn around and use the same fallacies, we are no better than they are.
