I often frequent forums where political discussions take place (whether that’s the ostensible purpose of the forum or not). And over the past few years I have noticed something interesting.
It seems that a lot of people espousing the right-wing point of view have a noticeably limited knowledge of American history. I don’t know whether this is due to lack of education, or an over-reliance on broadcast bloviators, or some other common problem, but as I said, it’s noticeable.
So when someone espousing the right-wing point of view writes a message that demonstrates such a lack, and someone else answers the message politely, with facts that show the shortcomings in the limited, right-wing point of view, more often than not, the original poster responds the same way–instead of dealing with the contents of the reply in their entirety, or even dealing with most of the points that have been raised, the right-winger will seize upon one word, or phrase, and go after that with a chain saw. Just that one word or phrase, mind you.
I have often thought of reposting the original message with that bogus bone of contention edited out, and when the right-winger ducks the issue again by picking another word or phrase, I’d re-post again with that edited out, and so on and so on and so on till they’ve had to deal with at least one of the real issues.
Alas, that’d take weeks and bore everyone else in the forum to death.
It’s a shame that the right-wing bloviators condition their followers to think that all they have to do is repeat the talking points and everyone around them will agree. After all, it works that way with the carefully chosen audiences the devotees see or hear. Pity real-life people who don’t care for right-wing talking points don’t work that way, isn’t it?
