🗣️ Taiwan’s Master of Evasion: Xiaoming
There’s a political satire joke circulating online. Though completely anonymous, I think everyone can probably guess which politician Xiaoming in this story is satirizing.
This story is so brilliantly written, so incisively sharp that one suspects it must have been written by someone’s secretary with such meticulous details. It perfectly captures the rhetorical strategies of modern green-brain politicians.
📚 Story Content: Xiaoming’s Cheating Scandal
Below is the dialogue between teacher and class president Xiaoming regarding cheating:
Teacher: “Xiaoming, a classmate reported you cheating on last Friday’s exam!”
Xiaoming’s Responses and Rhetoric Analysis:
| Xiaoming’s Rhetoric/Arguments | Type of Political Rhetoric Satirized |
|---|---|
| ”Don’t defame me. I’m class president with high moral standards. Would I cheat? If you can show evidence of my cheating, I’ll withdraw from school voluntarily!” | Moral Superiority/Commitment to Consequences: First emphasize one’s propriety, then set impossible-to-realize conditions. |
| ”As class president handling many class affairs, I naturally have limited study time, but I still insist on serving everyone while studying late into the night.” | Labor Claims/Responsibility Shifting: Use personal hard work as excuse to indirectly justify behavior. |
| ”My departure matters little, but if my being framed for cheating ruins the class’s reputation, what will classmates say about themselves?” | Moral Coercion/Collective Honor: Elevate personal failings to collective interests, leveraging group pressure. |
| ”No! This isn’t mine—it’s someone else’s!” | Blame-Shifting/Scapegoating: Directly deny and transfer responsibility to a fictional/anonymous party. |
| ”As class president, I must show loyalty—I can’t betray classmates for self-preservation, making them lose points. I’d rather be wronged!” | Loyalty Claims/Information Blackholes: Use “loyalty” as excuse to refuse providing key information. |
| ”You should know with your knees that I don’t need cheating for 60 points. Why risk expulsion for just 5-10 more points? I’m not that foolish!” | Motive Arguments/Logical Fallacy: Question cheating necessity, irrelevant to facts. |
| ”Have you verified all 2,000 students in school didn’t cheat and just the other 1,999? Senior Xiaohwa who graduated last year cheated—why didn’t you catch him?” | Collective Obfuscation/Relative Deprivation: Shift focus to others’ or past transgressions. |
| ”I’ve been doing this for three years. Why didn’t you tell me at the start that cheating was forbidden? Why reveal it now?” | Procedural Justice/Time Questions: Question enforcement timing and procedures. |
| ”That’s only ‘indirect’ evidence—doesn’t count! If you ‘directly’ caught me, I’d accept it.” | Redefine Rules: Suddenly establish new, more stringent standards for conviction. |
| ”Teacher, you’re a mainlander, right?” / “My grandfather was killed by KMT troops in the 228 Incident; my father was jailed in the Kaohsiung Incident. You mainlanders always bully us Taiwanese!” | Ethnic Appeals/Political Blackmail: Invoke historical trauma and ethnic division to suppress allegations. |
| ”You must be a CCP mole planted in Taiwan—CCP collaborator, pro-unification traitor, go back to mainland!” | Ad Hominem/Political Witch Hunt: Demonize opponent to undermine credibility. |
Teacher’s Final Conclusion:
Teacher: “Alright! Teacher won’t punish you. Xiaoming, keep cheating—you’ll definitely become a legislator!”
💡 Conclusion
Through exaggerated satire, this joke mocks how certain public figures facing accusations utilize opinion manipulation, emotional appeals, and political rhetoric to evade responsibility, implying such “evasion mastery” can actually lead to political success.