The natural urge to debunk propaganda

If you are like me, you have obtained a natural urge to doubt and find flaws in the reasoning of propaganda and marketing. This natural skepticism often made out to be to be a European stereotype: Where the American sees an opportunity, the European sees hidden agendas. Or it's only a German stereotype.

Whatever it is, that knee-jerk reaction of rebuttal is usually triggered by a certain certain use of language. Among the trigger points are

• hyperbole
  
  The classic car salesman trick. There's clearly something wrong if the only things you hear make something sound better than perfect.
• high-handed dismissal of inconvenient details 
  
  As a rhetorical trick, this is often used in dismissing criticism as fake and unfounded. If so, it usually goes hand in hand with a non sequitur.
  
  "the developers addressed this". Really? Where? How? When? Also: appeal to (false) authority.
  "people took care not to" Really? In what way? [citation needed] Also: Argumentum ad populum when the previous Argument was from oneselves perspective.
  
  Combine with tricks on word semantics, if you want the casual reader to accept your statement, when it actually states a contradiction:
  
  "you can remove it by disabling it". Disable and remove are not the same operation. At this point, it should be mandatory to explain what the effect of disabling something is and if its is really disabled or just no longer effective (which --again-- are two separate things).
  
  
• Claiming decisions or opinions as facts
  
  
  This is also called "Proof by Assertion". Even if your ego might think otherwise, claiming something does not make it true. Actually, believing such a thing rather is a tell-sign of psychopathy. And yes, I mean that.
  
  "the de-facto standard" (argumentum ad populum, maybe even silent majority, bandwagon fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc)
  "everybody knows that ..." (Argumentum ad Populum, Appeal to Ancient Wisdom)
  "x did this very badly" (Parade of Horribles, Red Herring, False Dilemma)

Where does this urge to refute these arguments come from?

Well, quite frankly, all of this stuff is manipulative and abusive behavior. You might have gotten used to it, because its so ubiquitous in commercials and political announcements and sometimes even in everyday interactions, but it is still abusive.

I like a phrase by George Simon for this kind of interaction: "covert aggression". Not the swaggering "I'll hit you if you don't do what I say", but the seemingly gentle "I know better than you and I know you don't know any better, so I don't take you seriously".

However, the latter is even more devious and destructive than the former. The former is at least honest. The latter is a devious way of avoiding a fair confrontation. Quite often, somewhere in their lives the manipulators have experienced repeatedly that it is hard to win a proper discussions, but that you can quite often get away with covert manipulation. Add to that a missing or disabled moral compass and you get a manipulative personality.

I'm not sure that the manipulators do this consciously. Quite often enough they seem mentally unequipped to even understand that they are not presenting logical arguments, but that they are pushing their agenda by manipulation. They seem to think that this is normal. Of course, that again can be a clear case of gaslighting: Making you doubt your own observations makes you easier to manipulate.

Covert manipulation is an voluntary (or negligent) attack on your ability to make an informed decision. And while you might not be able to pinpoint the exact methods (obviously, because it won't work otherwise), it still feels wrong. And that's where the urge to resist comes from: It is your subconsciousness telling you that your opposite is neither acting openly and nor in your best interest.

If you mention the problem, they will usually try to argue it away. At which point, the only reaction is to walk away and never come back.