The ancient Jewish sages once said, “He who receives a greeting from a passerby, and does not return it is a thief.”
I’m a slow learner sometimes, so I’ve made an effort, over the past several years, to be kind and civil to my leftist foes online. I’ve gone out of my way to be nice…
… but over and over again, they respond to my kindness with disdain and rudeness. My kindness was wasted on them, and I felt like the person who greets passersby, but gets no greeting in return.
Sure, one in a million might be open-minded enough to actually READ our arguments and try to understand them. Hence forth, I’m not going to waste my kindness on the off chance that my opponent is that one in a million.
Furthermore, I’m done showing any form of humility with them. Even if they catch me in an error, correct my facts, point out a typo etc. acknowledging this will only be seen as a sign of weakness. I’m sick and tired of their arrogance; there’s no need for me to inflate it even more.
I’ve been naive that way. When I see somebody who looks human, or writes like a human online, I assume that they’re human. Now I understand that leftists are, in a very real sense, less than human. They lack what we used to call “common decency.” They feel no shame for their own political misdeeds, and they’ll do everything they can to excuse their fellow leftists of crimes.
I would go so far as to describe them as a race of psychopaths. “Right” and “wrong” are alien concepts to them – unless it’s to advance their sick Communist ideology. Then it’s “By any means necessary.” This is how Communists of the past were able to slaughter so many innocent people, including women and children. “By any means necessary” includes mass executions. It includes election tampering, physical assaults, vandalism and theft. They’d sell their own mothers if it helped The Cause. This is the behavior of those who lack souls. The spiritual void is filled with whatever propaganda the powers-that-be elect to pump into their heads.
Enough ranting for now. I just had to get it off my chest.
I found the same, yet what to do about it? For me I decided to not look at myself and not at the foe but at possible silent readers of the debate. If a leftist is very rude and you show no humility but act very polite his rudeness stands out more. If you are overly polite you might be viewed as begging and this would reinforce the perceived leftist dominance. Now being full on rude back on the other hand or even use their own tactics is essentially a numbers game but a dangerous one. Once the dissidents have the numbers to just lie and smear and so on, they of course could do that, and it would certainly freak the leftists out as that was exactly what the Nazis purposely did back then (beating them at their own game of being horrible people) but at what prize! For the time being however I would suggest to not get too rude to them as bystanders might just perceive two bickering fools and not one leftist fool and a (at least somewhat) coolheaded dissident.