I will still get on discussion boards and try and have a rational conversation. It’s not possible, of course, but almost invariably I come away having thought or perceived emotionally something new which is useful. So I keep doing it, albeit with nothing close to the emotionally unhealthy extent I used to do.
One thing I have noticed, on some boards, is that if I make a point they can’t answer–to which there is no readily available, out of the cupboard Talking Point, which is to say distracting lie–they will post one of those generic job ads, where someone says they are making a million dollars a day doing almost nothing.
It reminds me of what they used to do on the Daily Cause when I had been autolynched, as I call it, by the mob: they would post recipes. It has the emotional tone, in that case, of roasting marshmallows over the burning corpses of their enemies.
And it hit me this morning just how AWFUL these people are, at heart, at root. They are relatively friendly cat people if you meet them in person. They are the mildly overweight 50-something women riding slowly in the bike lane, or the angry looking, also overweight, 20-something of indeterminate gender having a craft beer at a place known for having a “vibe” of that sort.
But they are MEAN at heart. Angry. Nasty. And it hit me this morning with more force than ever that these people START with the anger, and then find a place where they are encouraged to vent it. If they didn’t have the Left, they would find the KKK, or a mean biker gang, or a pedophile ring.
It STARTS with the anger. The politics are just a rationalizing veneer.
Yes, I have said this many times in many ways, but this specific emotional gestalt feels new to me. I really felt this morning how distant all these people are to any rational, human, honest and open discourse. They are following an evolutionary path very distinct from anything recognizably Liberal, or with any foundation in Logic, Justice, or the Enlightenment generally.
I am always happy to debate anyone on any topic. But anyone unable to recognize the possibility and acceptability of Difference is operating within a fundamentally different world than I am. Debate makes no sense to a fundamentally fanatical and faith based religious sensibility.
That world is very old–it is the one in which witches and heretics were executed in very painful ways–and which all the improvements of the past few hundred years in the West were intended to make extinct.
It is all retrogressive. It is all an attack on actual multiculturalism, actual moral and religious pluralism, and genuine diversity. They simply lie about everything they are doing. It is that simple.