WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES

Someone named Jesse James (freejessejames on Twitter) tried to insult the millions of women who marched on Saturday with this tweet:  “Just imagine if ALL these women cared as much about the homeless and Vets in this country as they do about Themselves.” 

Cha-ching, I guess, if you’re a Republican.  Right wing websites embraced this quote as if it actually made sense.  One of them even shared it with the breathless headline “Jesse James has taken down the entire Women’s March in one tweet and it just broke the internet.”

Oddly enough, my internet continues to work perfectly well, and that comment doesn’t seem to have caused any great consternation among the millions who marched Saturday, or among their many additional millions of sympathizers.  I can only conclude that the impact of James’ tweet is one of those “alternative facts” Republicans have recently discovered.

If you find yourself arguing with someone who tries to use this quote as his trump card (unavoidable pun), help them out by explaining that the argument is based on a logical fallacy known as a false dilemma.  In the first place, some homeless people in this country are women, and there are also plenty of women veterans (including, for instance, Senator Tammy Duckworth, who spoke at the Washington D.C. march).  The categories of Women, Homeless, and Vets are not mutually exclusive.

In the second place, caring about one of those cohorts does not preclude caring about the other two, or about any other subset of humanity that Mr. James might care to name.  

The Saturday marches were focused on women’s issues because our new President and the Republican controlled Congress have specifically threatened programs that are important to women – and also to men who care about women, which is why there were plenty of men who marched on Saturday.

And if you don't have time to explain all that, try this:  "Just imagine if all these Republicans cared as much about women in this country as they do about themselves."