Conversational Terrorism: How NOT to talk
excerpt:
LUNATIC FRINGE:If a person is making an imaginative or novel point, the approach here is to push the idea to a radical extreme generally agreed to be bad. The extreme can be either real or imagined. The hope here is that the other person will reflexively back off and retreat to a defensive position, thus short-circuiting the progression of the argument.
"So you think we ought to just throw out the whole system, then?"
"How is that different from classic fascism?"
"So you would just like to kill off anyone who disagrees with you, it appears!"
From:
About me: “'But I don’t want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked. 'Oh, you can’t help that,' said the Cat. 'We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.' 'How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice. 'You must be,” said the Cat, 'or you wouldn’t have come here.'” -Lewis Carroll