I received an interesting set of insights into the thought process of at least one Tea Party flack the other day. There was the fairly predictable element of not answering a question, ever, and the usual avoidance of truth in the accusations made. But there were a couple of interesting additions. When I said he was lying, he took so much offense that he challenged me to a duel and threatened my life (he would deny both of these statements, as he phrased both the challenge and the threat in terms to allow subsequent dissembling - which he did, when another commenter noted that he had threatened me). He did not establish the truth of anything he said. Rather, he threatened me with violence for saying that he was untruthful. An important observation - he did not attempt to prove me wrong, he attempted to bully me into either withdrawing the statement or being silent. He also accused me of cowardice based on his presumption that I did not accept his challenge - baseless in so many ways, but it suited his needs. Further, he accused me of hiding behind laws, when I noted that were there to be a physical altercation I would press criminal charges against him. So, when your veracity is questioned, you dont bother proving your statements true, you just bully the other side. And laws are something cowards hide behind. One might hope that laws were understood to apply to us all and that (in theory at least) they were their to protect and benefit us all. Apparently this particular Tea Party proponent has no problem ignoring the rule of law. But there was more to the lesson. I found that this person had some interesting parameters for defining victory in a political argument. One of them was getting your opponent to call you names. I admit, he succeeded in doing that. But consider this as a definition of winning in a political argument. All you have to do to win is provoke your opponent sufficiently and presto! Declare victory. It amounts to rewarding yourself for bad behaviour. Compared to threatening someones life for calling a lie a lie, it may be a small thing, but, if you look at the overall Tea Party approach to discourse, I think it may explain quite a bit. They are uncivil and unreasonable - and when their obdurate obfuscation becomes unbearable to others, they tell themselves they have won.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 17:37:10 +0000
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