It's not explicitly taught, it's Girardian mimetic desire to destroy anyone with -ist or -phobic thought, as those sorts of people are who are preventing us from creating a utopia.
You're doing the thing in the article. The truth is enough people regardless of political stance struggle to explicitly negotiate with ideas that are counter to their own world-view. That's not an unfortunate trait of any one demographic.
I'm sure we all use this rhetorical strategy often. I know I do. But I also think it's fair to call it out, because the implications of half the middle class feeling this way are very different from say, half of left-twitter.
To be fair to OP, I wasn't meaning to call them out (in the sense of shaming or other effects). I legitimately found it amusing that they used, or appeared to use, rhetorical methods like the one in the article.
But look at half (or more by the time I click 'reply') the comments here. They're discussing whether or not there is a War on the War on Christmas, they fell into the same rhetorical trap the article itself is discussing. This is great entertainment and a wonderful way to clear my mind at the end of work on a slow Friday.
> This "weak man," tactic is taught in undergrad, the idea is to destabilize an opposing view to neutralize the person holding it. [emphasis added]
Where is this taught?
> when half the middle class is educated to act like the seediest of prosecutors [emphasis added]
So you're bringing in economic class now, and for some reason explicitly assigning this behavior to prosecutors.