With due respect: What about Christians? What about ...?

Pikachus are cute, right?
What about Charmanders?

Has it happened to you?
Recently I was explaining to a friend why socialism was a bad idea.

"Well what about theocracies?"

I was confused. So I asked him to elaborate.

He explained that modern day theocracies like Saudi Arabia are not pleasant to live in. I pointed out that (a) we were not talking about Saudi Arabia, and (b) a theocracy being bad does not justify socialism being good.

"Well then, what about the United States? It is a corrupt capitalistic democracy."

I signed. My friend suffered from a case of "whataboutism".

But what about ...?

Whataboutism is a form of logical fallacy. It seeks to discount an argument by raising irrelevant points or obscure examples without any attempt disprove the argument's claim.

I have seen many a friend, Christian and atheist, Singaporean and American and even scientist and artist, fall into this into this trap.

For instance,

"Mao killed around 45 million people."
"What about the United States? They massacred people at Kent Ridge?"

"The religious crusades killed many people."
"What about Stalin?"

For more examples: