9. Challenge them on namecalling.
Since they have few coherent arguments, you will get called an unpleasant name on a semi-regular basis. Staying with the election thread I mentioned above, how many posts do you think it took before I was called a “teabagger”? If you guessed two, ding ding ding! You win! When I pointed out that using a vulgur sexual slur did not add anything to the quality of our discussion, the gentleman in question offered the commonly used Leftist response that he “didn’t mean it that way.”
“If you knew me, which you don’t and were simply making assumptions, you’d know I didn’t mean it in that way… A tea bag in my house is simply that. A bag full of tea. My mind didn’t work its way to that extreme. A tea party must be made up of a bunch of teabaggers anyway right?… if not, what is each member called? Tea Leaf?”
Can you spot all the low-hanging fruit he left on this one? The most obvious, of course, is that words have meaning and if one is going to deceitfully deny those meanings, then any chance of meaningful discussion vanishes. It took a few tiresome back-and-forth exchanges to clarify this for him; he was a particularly slow learner. Whether you get called a name directly or it’s hurled at people who think like you do, don’t let such foolishness go unpunished.
Next: quitters never win, winners never quit…
