Old Lesson: Avoid ad hominem attacks. Insulting your opponents does not disprove their claims.
New Lesson: Insult, early and often, your opponents' appearance, gender, real or perceived disabilities, religion, and economic status. Ad hominem attacks effectively shift your audience's focus toward that aspect of your opponents' physical or social selves that are most vulnerable to prejudice or mockery, allowing you to draw your audience's attention away from the force of their argument.
Old Lesson: Be specific. Avoid generalizations and vague phrasing. Logical arguments are most effective when they're focused and coherent.
New Lesson: Specificity is your enemy. It exposes you to the difficult process of actually having to prove what you say. Vague generalizations permit your audience to hear what they want to hear in your speech, without the distractions of evidence, examples, or countervailing facts.
Old Lesson: Stick to the facts. Don't make obviously or easily debunked claims.
New Lesson: Lie whenever you'd like. Arguments built upon fabrications, distortions, and uninformed speculation save you the time you would otherwise spend researching your topic. More importantly, audiences find a willingness to baldly lie fascinating. They are likely to view an unapologetic liar as a courageous leader, practicing a kind of honesty that a person who is determined to be honest fails to comprehend.
Old Lesson: When proven wrong, acknowledge your error and correct it.
New Lesson: Never retreat from any position you've taken, regardless of its validity. Do no apologize for your error: embrace it, declaim it with even greater conviction. If your opponent continues to expose your error, revisit the earlier lesson on ad hominem attacks.
Old Lesson: Support your claims with evidence from credible sources.
New Lesson: Your claims should be, as far as you're concerned, self-evidently true. The need for evidence in support of a claim delegitimizes the claim. After all, you are making the claim, aren't you?
