The Soggy Spaniel

Most of us think we are better than most of us. As a consequence, we are sometimes tempted to advertise our moral superiority through public expression. This is known as “ moral grandstanding ”. There’s nothing wrong with issuing public moral pronouncements; it’s not merely a right, but sometimes a duty. The issue here is motive. It is grandstanding when the real motive is to assert our virtue, regardless of whether it is also done to support a cause. With human behavior, often more than one motive is in play.

In the realm of logic there is a principle known as the fallacy of the false dilemma. The rules of logic are violated when a complex question is restricted to an arbitrary number of answers, typically just two.