I'm not entirely sure that this is worthy of a top-level post, but it certainly is an interesting pattern. "Logically-rude" is probably the largest objection to this kind of behavior, though - some facts are genuinely hard to defend in analytical terms, despite being empirically true, and some fraction of those will be among those which people come around to as they grow more experienced.

That said, in many cases you are probably exactly correct - the argument is not a factual description of the case, but a soldier to field on their side.