This essay concludes the series on Trump and Tyranny and does so with full confidence that no minds have been changed. I will be discussing Whataboutism and the Two Sides Problem.

The Soviets might not have invented Whataboutism, but they effectively weaponized it. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russians continued to use it effectively. Like other Russian tools, it has now become entrenched in American political discourse. While anyone can use it, it is a favorite of Fox News and Donald Trump. While Whataboutism has many forms, the most common versions used in the defense of Trump has the following general form.
1. Premise 1: Person A of affiliation 1 is accused of X by person B of Affiliation 2.
2. Premise 2: Person C of affiliation 2 is accused of X by person D of affiliation 1.
3. Conclusion: Therefore, A did not do X.
This is a fallacy because whether C did X is irrelevant to whether or not it is true that A did X. One example of this is when Trump and his defenders bring up the alleged misdeeds of Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. The specific flawed logic can be seen as concluding that Trump did not do anything, because “what about Hillary’s emails?”
Alternatively, one could grudgingly admit that Trump did something that might seem wrong, then use Whataboutism to try to “prove” that it is not wrong:
1. Premise 1: Person A of affiliation 1 is accused of X by person B of Affiliation 2.
2. Premise 2: Person C of affiliation 2 is accused of X by person D of affiliation 1.
3. Conclusion: Therefore, it is not wrong that A did X.
Clearly, even if C did X it does not follow that A doing X was not wrong. As noted above, Trump and his defenders try to defend Trump by asserting that Democrats, especially Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, have done bad things. As a specific example, when pressed about Trump trying to exploit his office for personal gain, his defenders will say “what about Joe Biden?” and conclude that Trump did not do anything wrong. But this does not prove that—even if Joe and Hillary did terrible things, this does not prove that Trump did nothing wrong.
It must be noted that if two sides are being compared, it is obviously relevant to consider the flaws of both sides. For example, if the issue is whether to vote for candidate A or B, then it is reasonable to consider the flaws of both A and B in comparison. So, if Biden is up against Trump in 2020, one should consider the flaws of both men.
However, the flaws of Biden do not show that Trump does not have flaws and vice versa. Also, if the issue being discussed is the bad action of Trump, then bringing up Biden’s allegedly bad action does nothing to mitigate the badness of Trump’s action. Unfortunately, Whataboutism is quite effective from a psychological standpoint, despite being logically vacuous. One reason for this is a general problem I have been considering which I call, for obvious reasons, the Two Sides Problem.
Put in broad terms, the Two Sides Problem is that the psychological impact of having two sides with strong emotional influence on their members has a huge impact on people’s willingness to accept empty rhetoric and fallacies that favor their side and harm the other side. As would be expected, this impact is routinely exploited, thus making the problem worse. While the Two Sides impact does affect all fallacies, it can throw gasoline on the illogical fires of many of them. Whataboutism is, quite obviously, one of these.
As noted above, Whataboutism is about defending one’s side by pointing out (or making up) bad things about the other side. This bad reasoning is powered by the target’s positive view of their side and their dislike of the other side. The most obvious effect is that a target accepts a fallacy as good reasoning because of how they feel about the sides. Another effect is that Whataboutism can cause an erosion of principle: For a person to defend bad behavior by “justifying” it with Whataboutisms (or other fallacies) they must be willing to tolerate that bad behavior on the part of their side. If a person has a principle that they stick to consistently, they would condemn bad behavior regardless of whether it was done by their side or the other side. For example, I condemn Trump’s children for cashing in on the family name to secure underserved positions and I condemn Hunter Biden for cashing in on the family name to secure a job he had not earned. I will not defend Hunter Biden by saying “what about the Trump children?” I will be writing more about the two sides problem in the future, but the series on Trump’s tyranny is concluded.