Straw Man Agreement
I had a friend who went to USC a year when logging in the Santa Cruz mountains was a big politial issue. She was opposed to the logging, and worked with the USC geology and biology departments to make an environmental impact study explaining why selling logging rights would be a bad economic decision for the county. At the city council meeting the problem wasn't her opponents - it was her supporters.
"We'd get up to show a topo chart illustrating soil erosion and some hippie in the back would start cheering something about altering the tree auras of the elves that live in the knotholes of the daughters of Yggradsil. I really wanted to tell them 'I realize that you're trying to help but please be quiet - you're making us look like morons.'"
I'm calling this a "straw man agreement". Not a straw man argument, but actually agreeing with your position using rationale so pained that they might as well be making the opposite argument.
(I could have sworn that I'd already posted this, but I looked back in my entries and couldn't find any record of it.)
"We'd get up to show a topo chart illustrating soil erosion and some hippie in the back would start cheering something about altering the tree auras of the elves that live in the knotholes of the daughters of Yggradsil. I really wanted to tell them 'I realize that you're trying to help but please be quiet - you're making us look like morons.'"
I'm calling this a "straw man agreement". Not a straw man argument, but actually agreeing with your position using rationale so pained that they might as well be making the opposite argument.
(I could have sworn that I'd already posted this, but I looked back in my entries and couldn't find any record of it.)