Both sides are not the same, but I also think that if you unironically strictly believe that one political faction is 100% right and another is 100% wrong, you're part of the problem.
The statement "one side is literal nazis and one side wants free healthcare" has done more harm to the democrats than anything the right could have come up with.
The political parties are simply giving the voters a choice.
The statement "one side is literal nazis and one side wants free healthcare" has done more harm to the democrats than anything the right could have come up with.
I would certainly question the accuracy of this statement, but to the extent there is truth to this, the harm isn't coming from the statement or the general attitude of those expressing it. The harm stems from the fact that half the population's politics orbits not around which party has better ideas to improve their lives, but by which side makes their childishness, lack of intelligence and lack of decency feel validated.
I think the fallacy lies not in the conclusion but in how it's arrived at. If you can make an argument that both sides are above some threshold of badness and that's all you're arguing, I don't think that's a fallacy. I also don't think it's a fallacy to push back on that and say that the harms of one side are exaggerated and the other side is significantly worse. I do think people can be reductive though and use one-line slogans like "both sides are evil." But then saying "[x] side is better because to disagree is the both sides fallacy" is equally reductive. That doesn't mean either statement is necessarily wrong, but it's just not an argument. If I have low trust in people on the internet as a general rule, and someone says their opinion without arguing for it, I'm probably not going to adjust my beliefs.
The Democrats are a big tent party.
