Stop the Cuts - National Demonstration

This is absolutely true. Discussions will often morph into something else completely, with two people still taking their sides, even though they never meant to argue about such-and-such thing, and may not even believe what they've been led to argue about. This cool little trick is often used by people on purpose. Most famous of them was Socrates. Because of it, he got the reputation of a gadfly and was put to death by Athens. In this situation, you're reminding me a bit of a gadfly, Tynan.

Mark, I think by all contemporary interpretations of what happened, it really wasn't so simple and this way of summarising the situation also borrows heavily from the 'literary Socrates' (the 'gadfly' seems to be a Platonic image; I myself suspect that Socrates never quite had such a massive political importance other than through having taught Plato, who was from one of the most influential families, and who was clearly profoundly shaken by Socrates' execution). I can't pretend to be an expert in the huge industry surrounding the 'real Socrates' and the 'literary Socrates', but I'd advise steering clear.

It is true that Socrates' argument patterns are sometimes are shown by Plato as unnecessarily confrontational, fallacious, or otherwise problematic, but on the whole they are so varied as to paint a very complex picture, and there are plenty of aggressive, ridiculous, side-tracking, pompous, and other argument-patterns deployed by his interlocutors.

And it's 'tynan' with a small 't', FBMMFS.