It is interesting how quickly people use the concept known as the false dichotomy when attacking people. Of course with the state of our education they generally have no clue they are doing so. This is the you are either with us, or against us type of approach. It is called a false dichotomy as it attempts to force reality down to having only two choices. In reality, there are usually more than two choices. If you choose to dumb it down and force people into a category then that may appeal to certain audiences, but those who know much about critical thinking will be underwhelmed.

So I would like to go over a few of the popular go to false dichotomies of the day.

Climate Change Denier

This is used an extreme amount these days. Any challenge to the narrative spoken somewhere by someone who claims to be for "climate change" will quickly result in you being labeled a denier. They don't even have to have any actual evidence for the claim they are making at the time. All that is required is that you challenge them.

The problem is that if you are an intelligent person then you are not a climate change denier. I actually don't believe there are many people that fit that label at all.

Why do I say this? Well the climate has been changing since before man existed, we've had small ice ages, and big ice ages. We know the climate of northern Africa changed dramatically. There is some evidence that Antarctica may not have been as it is at one time and this is based upon the pole shift theories. These all indicate the presence of climate change. They happened without man. So is this process simply going to STOP because man is present?

Realistically that is a big fat NO. So climate change happens.

Those of us labeled Climate Change Deniers generally fall into two camps. There may be more than two, but there are two I can think of at the moment. There are those of us that don't believe we should blame every single event that happens on climate without doing research. People pass speculation and hypothesis off as fact without actually being required to research as long as they support the climate change agenda. I call it an agenda as it is clearly mostly a political and propaganda movement. Is the climate changing? Most likely. It always has changed with or without man. I don't expect that to change. So a person that challenges ANY announcement such as blaming hurricane activity on climate change is immediately labeled a denier, when the current hurricane behavior does not appear different from what we've seen for some time. There are different opinions, but I took my view from studies by noaa.gov and they concluded if there is any change it is so insignificant that it cannot truly be stated to be climate change related at this time. So that is one type of "denier". You can call us people who expect evidence to back up claims. If you make a new claim then you better have new evidence. This is not a religion, or at least it shouldn't be. Yet it is often treated like a religion or cult. To speak up and challenge is blasphemy even though challenging is an important part of the scientific method.

There is a second type of person labeled denier. They are the people who think that while the climate is changing it likely has nothing to do with man. These are people that do not stand behind the anthropogenic global warming model and realize that there is a reason they stopped referring to it as "global warming". The data and events did not match. So they switched to climate change. This is viewed as a shell game, or a con job by many people. EVERYTHING is climate change. An ice age is climate change, global warming is climate change. When they switched from global warming to climate change they literally did pick a RIGGED game. They can't be wrong. Any change of any kind can result in "see, climate change!" Global warming at least was a specific TYPE of climate change. There are several reasons why REASONABLE people who truly believe in the scientific method might challenge anthropogenic climate change.

1) The scientific method. Make all data you collected available, as well as a detailed explanation of how you reached your conclusion. This allows others to try to reproduce and test. It allows challenges. If the challenge can be met and still survives then it moves on. Yet science does not EVER stop challenging. That is part of it. It simply takes what makes the most sense based upon evidence and what is known at the time. The problem is that the data and methods in these studies are often very secretive, and some of them such as with the Climate Gate scandal show the "scientists" (unworthy of the label) changing their numbers and methods when the data didn't fit their agenda. Hacked emails revealed that. Applying different math to different parts of the data to shape the curve how they wanted. This eliminated inconvenient truths such as the Medieval Warming period where the streets like vine street and such in England got their names since it was so warm then that they had vineyards. Or wiping out what is known as the little ice age. People that follow the scientific method will generally have a great deal of problems with such actions.

2) The constant pushing of "consensus" to shut down debate. The ostracizing, firing, and shaming of anyone that challenges it. These belong in a religion, not science. They are more like a cult trying to ENFORCE their desires than people actually seeking the truth. This is not part of the scientific method. A scientist should welcome challenges as long as they are reasonable and something that can be responded to based upon science. If someone proposes an alternative explanation that fits the data then it should be considered. Consensus only matters for the current view and when speaking to the lay person that has no intention of using science themselves to investigate. When it is used against fellow scientists then it becomes much the same as saying "you have to have faith" and then if they push forward calling them a "heretic!" Burn the witch. This is not science. This is religion.

3) Some scientists believe man is impacting the climate. They simply may not believe it is being impacted in the reason being pushed by the political agenda. For example they may be very aware of heat islands created by large scale paving and construction. They may also be aware of weather manipulation technologies, cloud seeding, lasers, HAARP, and dropping of aluminum oxide and other materials into the atmosphere. These things could ALL have an impact on the climate and would be anthropogenic in nature. Yet these are not the things the political climate change movement is pushing. They are pushing CO2 and Carbon. Why? Well a lot of it seems to make more sense as a money and power grab by politicians and corporations. Is this the case? To some degree this is definitely happening. Likewise if it is an issue then Carbon Tax is no form of solution. It will fix nothing, but it will give more power and wealth to people and allow the worst offenders to continue as they are. So challenging Carbon tax...

4) Perhaps they challenge the proposed solution like Carbon Tax. For that reason they are called a denier. Yet, that is not actually denying it is simply stating that IF it is a problem that Carbon Tax is an idiotic approach to take unless your actual goal has nothing to do with the climate, and everything to do with power and politics.

5) Some scientists follow the suns activity quite extensively and the records of sun activity go back quite far. The number one component for what effects our climate is the sun. If the sun goes through any changes which it does appear to do that is going to impact our climate. If sun is presented as a likely explanation for what we are experiencing then the person will be called a Climate Change Denier. Yet they didn't deny climate change.

6) Realist. Unless our goal is to implement Anthropogenic Climate Change we must face the reality that the climate WILL change from time to time. It isn't the first time. At the end of the ice age a lot of coastal civilzations were in time below water. Mankind likes to build next to the ocean. The ocean level is GOING to change unless we actually introduce Anthropogenic Climate Change and try to resist the sun and what has occurred in the history of the Earth. This is also incredibly dangerous and could backfire on us spectacularly so it is not something we should rush into.

The base of the issue is that people are called a Climate Change Denier when they are nothing of the sort. They either don't agree with a specific point or they disagree with Anthropogenic Climate Change. Yet they are being treated as though they don't believe in climate change at all. This is character assassination and is an attempt to make the person out as a fool. The name calling, ad hominem attacks, and generalizations used should be a red flag for anyone versed in critical thinking.

Anti-Vaxxer

If you challenge vaccines in any way you likely will get called an anti-vaxxer. Yet as with climate change this too is a false dichotomy. Perhaps you see that vaccines have their place, but you know there are dangers to their production and that all barriers of accountability for safety and improvement have been removed from the pharmaceutical companies that make them. They cannot even be sued. So they keep pushing the same vaccines and making billions and not bothering to fix the problems that they know about them. This is a case where collateral damage is deemed acceptable. In reality all efforts should be made to improve and further eliminate collateral damage and adverse effects. If 1 person in 100,000 experiences an adverse effect it shouldn't then just be called good. Work to get that to 1 in 200,000 and then 300,000, etc should be done. Safety is an issue. If a component in vaccines such as mercury is challenged the result is to again like the cult mentality of climate change to attack and call the person an anti-vaxxer and to move on to character assassination and ad hominem attacks. The person may not be anti-vaccine. They simply expect ongoing efforts to make them safer and safer, and they do not believe in removing all accountability from the manufacturers of substances we are going to inject into our body and that of our children.

Then there are those that are not completely anti-vaccine but they do not believe a baby infant needs a Hepatitis V sexually transmitted disease vaccine. There are also some that see no need for a female vaccine to be given to males as well. They may see the hordes of vaccines that are ever increasing in number as being a bad thing to give to infants. They may see the need for vaccines to treat specific outbreaks, but they see no reason for the sheer number of them and the politicization of them other than the guaranteed paycheck for the big pharmaceutical companies that are lobbying the politicians.

Then there are those that mostly are anti-vaccine. They tend to be those that studied the world health organization data and realized that almost everything we vaccinated against was already nearly eradicated before the introduction of the vaccine. It seemed to mirror the adoption of good hygene and cleanliness rather than the actual vaccine. In fact, some places would have a spike of the disease after the vaccine was introduced, but this only happened in a few cases. These same people may also note the abnormally high amount of mental issues such as autism (many different spectrums) and other traits that did not exist in these numbers until recently. They DO seem to correlate with the vaccine regimen. Some people will challenge it and say "we didn't know how to diagnose these things" when they tend to forget that a lot of the people talking about it are not going purely off of a diagnosis. They are going off of historical record for abnormal things in children. They were not as common. Yet, if this is not a cult, or religion then someone challenging something and expressing concern should be welcomed rather than vilified.

Truther

It is ironic that the term truther is often tossed around as a derogatory term. It is sad that someone seeking the truth and willing to ask questions and hope for answers is considered a bad thing. What is the opposite of a truther? A liar? A zombie? A faithful? A cult member?

People should be able to ask whatever questions they want. You don't have to agree with them, but asking questions should not be viewed as a negative thing. If there is a problem then it serves us all if someone is willing to ask questions. It is very stupid to just blindly follow and to feel like asking questions is anathema.

Racist

If a person is a minority or involved with minority groups in some way then they cannot be challenged. In this day and age the false dichotomy is that you either agree with them on every issue they believe in or you are a racist. You are not allowed to challenge things due to other reasons, it doesn't matter. You're still a racist.

Nazi

Most people using this term have no clue that was the National Socialist Workers Party in Germany and that they shortened it to NAZI. It was a movement founded around the idea of National Socialism. You know, that same thing that Bernie Sanders is selling to people? Hitler was Charismatic and a great speaker. He sold it to the Germans too. Yet, the people being called Nazis today are nothing of the sort in general. Now if you are referring to someone that is a card carrying member of a neo-nazi party or something like that there may be something to that, yet it is called NEO for a reason. It is not the same thing. These people are generally posers. I don't see them marching and pushing for Socialism. In fact, that is more often something I see the people calling other people Nazis are doing. That or communism.

Fascism

While there are aspects of the United States and most governments in the world that would fit the definition of fascism, the fascist movement involving Mussolini and then later Hitler had specific actions they used. The people in our society that are most often guilty of using those tactics are those claiming to be anti-fascist. You see one trait of the fascists is they were very much against free speech. They would protest and attack those they didn't want speaking. Sound familiar? They would suggest laws to stop such actions.

They would respond to and push propaganda to attack free speech and ideas they didn't approve of. They too would totally miss the point that hate speech is still just SPEECH, and does not matter until it becomes actions. They too would totally miss how they were calling others evil (or hateful) while it was their own actual ACTIONS that were expressing both of those things. They essentially would be embroiled in a web of hypocrisy and they'd be so committed to it that they would not question it. In fact, to question it made you the enemy. Don't ask questions. You already know the truth. Don't listen to anyone else. Don't think. We already told you how to think. If someone speaks against these things... attack them. By any means necessary.

Conclusion

You either want free speech or you don't. As soon as you start putting restrictions on speech regardless of whether you like it or not you choose a side. How long until they limit what you are saying too? This is a slippery slope. Once you allow people to restrict speech you may be in the popular group now, but once you are not it is too late. You've given them the abusive tool to silence you.

False Dichotomies are all over the place. Stop using them. They are usually wrong.

Generalizations. Also sometimes called stereotypes. Give people a chance. Quit being so quick to jump to labeling people. Unless you wish to viewed as a zealot who is pushing some new cult or religion.

Revel in questions. People asking questions is good. Sure sometimes you may not choose to respond as sometimes people ask questions simply to troll people. That is your decision. Yet, asking questions should never be viewed as a bad thing. Also asking questions does not mean you have to stop action, or change your mind. It just leaves the door open. We all are wrong about things more often than we'd like to admit. People challenging us and asking questions can hopefully stop us from making haste decisions and making things worse.

An environment where questioning is bad is an environment we should all avoid.