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>Derailment is a purely rhetorical technique, so I'm not seeing the problem. The problem is you made an appeal to authority to "derailing for dummies"... >It'

• wpietri 14y ago
  No. I personally am calling that a common derailing tactic; I just linked to that as evidence that other people also see it as a problem. If you have some counter-evidence, feel free to present it. As I explained elsewhere in this thread, most people don't intend to derail. What matters isn't the conscious intent of the speaker; it's the effect on the conversation. That X is a legitimate observation doesn't mean that X is also a valid contribution at any point in any discussion. Watch politicians spin something on a TV show. They can make valid observations all day long that avoid, obfuscate, dodge, color, distract, mislead, and misinform. If a privileged person jumps into a discussion about injustice in a way that changes the topic from the injustice under discussion to something more comfortable for them, that's derailing. They can do that using a valid observation, an invalid observation, a rhetorical device, or a jack-in-the-box. Also, Mr. Brand New Anonymous Account: if you aren't going to own your words, expect me to stop responding shortly.