Thatcher’s Blame

###posting as anonymous###

I was thinking of another fallacy I see often, it is mostly used by people looking to seemingly fill someone with bad conscience. It has to do with when someone is blamed for being “evil”no matter what the outcome is. I believe there is a fallacy like that called “Thatcher’s Blame” but I don’t know if it applies here. For example, a man who constantly chases women and seeks companionship (at best someone looking for a partner, at worst a philanderer) is said to be promoting “rape culture and toxic masculinity and oppression of women in typical gender roles” and yet when he refrains from that, and chooses to live as a single man, he is deemed “misogynistic and sexist.” It’s a situation of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Another example: An organization caves into outcry from PC groups to apologize for “offensive” remarks or other such similar things. If they don’t apologize, they could face violent repercussions. If they do apologize, they will lose supporters who say they “caved.” But the PC people will say “no one was forcing them to do it! They had a choice!” Clearly, they were forced into it. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

Is this Thatcher’s Blame, or something else? It is certainly fallacious whatever it is....

This is more of a cognitive bias than a fallacy. While it is reasonable to understand that there are pros and cons to virtually all of our behaviors, it is unreasonable to focus on only the pros or the cons. Very often this is deliberate, as in political spin. The rational thinker needs to weight the pros and cons to arguments without bias (or while recognizing one's own biases). The debater is supposed to sell their side the best they can in order to "win" the debate.

This doesn't seem to fit the role that "Thatcher's Blame" does; which is more of a "Hillary Clinton is a demon and everything she does is evil.

I read “Thatcher’s Blame” as a method to “scapegoat” by avoiding the real causes and effects and attribute them to any adversary point of view. Blaming Margaret Thatcher for whatever came after she left office might be valuable if the blame was grounded in facts. However, the post hoc character of such an argument is attractive to anyone already convinced of the views behind the ruse. It is a commonly used tactic to further cognitive biases that support otherwise untenable beliefs and ideas.

As an example found herein, "The reason New Orleans was hit so hard with the hurricane was because of all the immoral people who live there. Explanation: This was an actual argument seen in the months that followed hurricane Katrina. Ignoring the validity of the claims being made, the arguer is blaming a natural disaster on a group of people." Arguably, the prime promulgators of this nonsense did so to avoid responsibility for their own failures.

Therefore hurricane Katrina was the fault of GW Bush and all who followed him. The problem is, those who attribute blame “feather-bed” by founding their claims only on memes-rash accusations and never specific facts that can be accepted or rejected on their own merits. All of the many emotionally loaded internal memes like “rape culture, toxic masculinity and oppression of women” simply prop up the ruse as if to lend the larger claim legitimacy.