Denial strategy # 1: Avoidance

"I'll talk about anything but real problems!"

      Somewhere deep inside a fear that problems bring harm on us and those we care about.  However, to avoid problems coming to light people often enlist avoidance strategies of denial.  This is a ploy to keep the problems out of sight and out of mind by providing distractions and refusing to directly answer questions by continually changing the subject.  This is meant to both distract and discourage meaningful inquiry into a subject.   

      Common strategies employed are to condemn opinions as immoral and change the subject by distracting, creating an emotional response and sucking others into the turmoil.  These types of arguments are commonly fishing for fear/avoidance reactions from readers.  Thus the original premises, goals and nuance of the conversation gets obscured and lost in a whitewash.  

If someone calls the bluff, there is usually another attempt to change the subject and if this fails a reversion to populism suggesting that the opposing viewpoint is irrational and unfounded (with no evidence to back up this assertion) and everyone thinks so.