Fighting the Feilds of Strawmen

Today, we face a field rife with enemies. Hordes and hordes of them, each of them with a secret plan, an evil motive which need to be stopped before they invade our houses, take over the country, or plunge the world into chaos.
Like zombies, they mass together and invade us in hordes. They can be found everywhere, preying on our minds.
Beware of: the Straw man fallacy.

Get your pitchforks and torches folks! Distroying this one will be easy!

We must resist and fight this menace. Left unchecked, it takes our minds and makes it so that we cannot think. Thankfully, there is an anecdote, like a zombie, it flees when sunlight is shined on them.

The straw man fallacy occurs when the arguer sets up or assumes a simplified position which his opponent holds. Rushing upon the position with weapon raised high, the arguer hacks and chops the argument ‘til it lies destroyed on the floor.

I remember watching one congressman giving a speech on the floor of congress during the debates on Healthcare. He was distorting the Republican’s version of healthcare to the point where he was making a fool of himself.

“This is the Republican’s plan” he ranted. “DON’T GET SICK!” And if you do get sick, DIE QUICKLY!”
He repeated his point a few times (for laughs I hope, because he wasn’t doing himself any favors if he was serious) and then he sat down.
Can we move forward with such arguments? Can we come to agreement when one side is demonizing and simplifying the other side?
It’s satisfying to totally destroy someone’s argument. Sometimes, we want that so badly, that we misrepresent the other person’s side. Setting up a straw man, and blowing it up. Sure, it’s easy—that is why we see it all the time.
We are intelligent people. Sometimes the world isn’t simple and the arguments aren’t easy to refute. But we must not stoop to use straw men. Instead of giving a show of acting heroically and slashing the straw figures of our enemies, or, worse, become captured by the hordes of straw, let us do battle on a different side of the field, the field where the real people meet, where hearts are engaged and truth is discovered.