Fixed points in arguments
A twitter mutual made a good point recently about what he calls "fixed points" in arguments. His thread is here:
Mr Skinner on fixed points in arguments
By coincidence, this is broadly in my policy area of UK housing.
What he's identified here is a tactic of maintaining a particular assertion at all costs. The costs in particular include credibility with outsiders. And this assertion is being maintained rhetorically to avoid undermining some ulterior proposition. Per his example, the actual position being defended is a sacred value that is two or three logical steps away from the "fixed point" argument. It's a sort of rhetorical "Defence In Depth".
So the point of repeating the lie is to avoid exposing a different lie that would be more painful to abjure. Implicitly, in-group cohesion is more important than credibility and fidelity to truth.
The obvious problem with thus living by lies is that public discourse becomes very difficult. But people so maintaining rhetorical "defence in depth" have a problem when they don't completely dominate the discourse: lies don't compose as well as truths do. So if you have erected multiple fixed points to defend your sacred values, and these fixed points conflict with each other, well now you have two problems.
The application of this concept to the leasehold debate wouldn't fit in a simple blog post: there are just too may of these mutually contradictory fixed point claims to know where to start.
Leasehold Derangement Syndrome (enumerates some of the fixed points)
Source