Covert Narcissists are sneaky little buggers. If there ever was going to be an 11th commandment written and decreed by God to help humanity overcome the innate social and emotional poverty created by narcissistic thinking in humans it seriously should be “Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies in personal thinking or while making any and all persuasive or defensive arguments.”
If you have never been to college or failed to take a logic class alongside Philosophy I and Philosophy II in college, here is a quick cheat sheet of handy-dandy terms to help you get started. It reflects the most common logical fallacies being put forward today on various news channels (liberal and conservative alike) on American television stations by narcissistic speakers promoting entitlement.
The same technique used at the dinner table to invalidate, traumatize, bait or smear campaign against a bullied scapegoat or narcissist’s target is being used narcissistically in pop-culture rhetoric. Do not get sucked into an endless, time-wasting debate with an irrational, illogical, mean-spirited, power and control seeking, verbally and intellectually competitive Overt, Cerebral, Status-Seeking Somatic, or Covert Narcissist.
List of Logical Fallacy Types by name with hashtag denotation listed
- Strawman #strawman — misrepresenting someone else’s argument willfully or with willful negligence after being informed their comprehension of intent is incorrect; misrepresenting someone else’s argument to make it easier to attack the target with a sidewinder attack
- False Cause #falsecause — presuming that a real or perceived relationship between things means one is necessarily the root cause of another
- EXAMPLE “I screwed up at work today because you did not have my dinner ready on time and therefore deserve a beating (wife, child, mother, whoever)
- Slippery Slope #slipperyslope — jumping to extreme hypotheticals too quickly can be as much of an error in judgment as going down a path of choices that is likely to inevitably lead to a negative or undesired outcome
- EXAMPLE “If we allow same-sex couples civil rights to marry and live like free Americans, it will lead to child rape, reckless endangerment of children, pedophilia, everyone dying of A.I.D.S, rampant bestiality, and the decline of modern heterosexual marriage.”
- Ad Hominem #adhominem — attacking a person’s character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine that person’s credibility or to smear campaign a speaker; attempting to undermine credibility rather than engaging in a valid debate or conceding a point in an argument
- Example — name-calling a person, group, or another speaker while trying to hijack a debate topic in order to prevent having to validate an opponent’s claim
- HINT: Think schoolyard bully mentality — the lowest form of emotional IQ narcissistic abuse tactic
- Appeal to Emotion #appealtoemotion — attempting to manipulate an emotional response from a target or victim in place of making a valid, persuasive, and logical argument; appeal to fear, hate, envy, pity, sympathy, pride, ego, vanity, et cetera
- EXAMPLE “You can’t leave me. I [need you/want you/love you/will go to rehab/won’t hit you again/promise to change] .”
- HINT — Whatever
- The Fallacy Fallacy #fallacyfallacy — presuming that because someone made a poor or incomplete attempt to simplistically explain a valid concept that the concept itself is wrong, invalid, or as a point has no validity or merit
- EXAMPLE — just because someone cannot tell you how to do the math on a physics equation does not mean it’s not going to hurt when you fall out of a window or get hit by a bus
- Tu Quoque #tuquoque — avoiding having to answer a constructive criticism or valid point by criticizing the opposing speaker; diverting a debate rival’s attention and/or that of the audience by failing to acknowledge valid criticism and instead pointing a blaming finger at whoever made the comment as if the fact they said something truthful or fact-based makes them somehow a relative target
- EXAMPLE — Sally made a good point at 8 pm that meets the current event information to date but Tony refuses to validate her because he claims in 1989 she held a different opinion about it
- Personal Incredulity #personalincredulity — just because a person does not know or understand something makes it untrue, invalid, or not applicable to a contemporary claim, set of circumstances, or argument
- EXAMPLE Just because Jim says he does not believe pollution affects nature he thinks it’s okay to dump his trash wherever he wants and to pump toxic chemicals from his auto body shop into a local sewage pond or river
- Special Pleading #specialpleadingfallacy — begging the question
- EXAMPLE — A person claiming to be acting in your best interest conveniently says in order to prove he is on your side, you must first agree to trust him
- Hint: Think GET IN THE VAN KIDS — I AM MISSING A PUPPY AND NEED YOUR HELP TO FIND IT — I HAVE CANDY — YOU CAN TRUST ME… HONEST
- Loaded Question #loadedquestion — building presumption into a question so a speaker appears to have agreed with all parts and the premise if and when they choose to respond to any of it
- HINT — people who love to sabotage or manufacture chaos through triangulation use this one a lot
- Burden of Proof #burdenofproof — suggesting someone’s subjective experience viewpoint is invalid unless it can be substantiated by a witness (gaslighting); claiming that to say no abuse or crime happened or was committed because no one can prove who did it (avoidance of responsibility); making wild claims then demanding people prove them tangibly wrong (as in the case of people who are staunchly religious)
- EXAMPLE — declaring a person is going to hell if they do not agree to conform to religious dogma (since there is no way to prove or disprove, the challenge to debate or disprove them is in itself abusive)…
And the list goes on and on…
- Ambiguity #ambiguity
- The Gambler’s Fallacy #gambersfallacy
- Bandwagon #bandwagon a.k.a. “Mobbing” (#mobbing)
- Appeal to Authority #appealtoauthorityfallacy
- Composition #fallacyofcomposition
- Division #fallacyofdivision
- No True Scotsman #notruescotsman
- Genetic #geneticfallacy
- Black-or-White Thinking #blackandwhitethinking
- Begging the Question #begging the question
- Appeal to Nature #appealtonature
- Anecdotal #anecdotal
- The Texas Sharpshooter #texassharpshooter
- Middle Ground #middlegroundfallacy
[There are a bunch more, but we hope readers are wise enough to get the point. If an argument or point a Covert Narcissist or Overt Narcissist makes seems illogical, irrational, short-sighted, off-topic, or a comment appears to have been said despite being unhelpful, mean in nature or was stated from what sounds like a nonsensical perspective, chances are it is a logical fallacy gibberish.]
If you find that you yourself are guilty of having faulty thinking or having made illogical arguments, forgive yourself, admit the error, make amends to the people who were harmed or are collateral damage victims, and stop doing it. It’s that simple.
Unlike Narcissists and people with Cluster B personality disorders, there is no hidden agenda to punish or harm people who make mistakes. Normal humans have compassion and understand we all are guilty of committing one of these emotional errors in psychological judgment at times. What is not normal would be to realize we’ve made a mistake and make little to no effort to apologize, set the record straight, or to move forward in such a way that allows everyone (ourselves and others) to engage in civil discourse about a subject that doesn’t have any one correct answer.
If the difference between divergent questions and convergent questions is not something you learned by second grade, it might seriously be worth your time to grab a dictionary. Looking up the difference in terms, it becomes easy to see why most smart elders give the advice never to discuss religion or politics over family dinners.
This is not a character attack on people’s intelligence, pointing out when and if people elect to make irrational, illogical, or short-term placating answer type arguments. Anyone who claims otherwise has their own Covert Narcissist agenda.
It does indicate a red flag warning sign of Covert Narcissism or outright Anti-Social nature if and when a person is led directly to the information but out of arrogance, passive aggression, or social malaise refused to do the reading on the material or complete any task to substantiate claims via academic research.
What is a “logical fallacy”? It’s the academic term for a poor persuasive argument or conversational defense form commonly used by narcissistic people to win discussions by frustrating and confusing targets.
