Conversing with trolls

It happens sometimes – against our better judgment, we find ourselves sucked into endless, circular conversations with people who have the logic and reasoning skills of Amy Winehouse on crack and think Fox News is a legitimate source of information. Then their friends get involved, and it’s like watching Multiplicity in person, where each subsequent addition is dumber than the last. And considerably less attractive than a young Michael Keaton.

In any good argument, you have to have a starting point. You both agree that there is a conflict between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, and then you begin to debate how to fix it. You both agree that you are not, in fact, his mother, and then you begin to discuss how he should clean up after himself in light of that fact. The problem with arguing with people like the one we’ll call Clone of Ineptitude, or Cloney for short, is that there is no valid point from which to start.

It’s like getting into a heated argument over what color to paint the wall, only to discover that the other person doesn’t believe the wall exists.

The vast majority of dogmatic Republicans* refuse to accept or acknowledge actual facts, because that would mean they’d then have to use real logic and engage in an actual conversation, rather than just screaming about freedom and wee bitty babies and death panels.

*I don’t hate all Republicans, I promise I don’t. I just hate the Republicans who blindly salivate after whatever candidate the party throws in front of them, regardless of how intrinsically evil that person is, without ever trying to understand what a presidency under that person would really look like. I just hope the good Republicans can step up and wrest back control of their party from the evangelical right before shit gets too real.

They still cling desperately to their obsolete birther theories, because it’s easier than having to address why you were so willing to buy into that nonsense in the first place. They scream “Kenyan-born Muslim!” even when confronted with a Hawaiian birth certificate and the fact that the dominant religion in Kenya is Christianity, followed distantly by Baha’i, because recognizing and admitting your ignorance requires often-painful self-awareness.  

So I had a bad feeling about Cloney from the start, when he seemed incapable of grasping the fact that being Jewish in the United States makes you a minority. I’ll pause – you can go bang your head against a nearby wall if needed. Just don’t bang too hard – it gets worse. Ok, back?

Then he decided that since I’m claiming to be a minority, I must be an illegal immigrant. Because obviously one plus orange equals cat.

Then there was some token screeching about how allowing pharmacists to discriminate against, slut-shame and injure women is proof of “religious freedom” because everyone’s personal religious beliefs should trump the legal rights of everyone else, obvs. Oddly, when you turn that on its head and ask if a Muslim-American’s right to murder infidels because their religion says so trumps your right to live, they get awful quiet. Weird, huh?

Next came the “quit whining and do it yourself” mantra. Which I happily responded to with “Masters degree and Director of Communications, suck on THAT, bitch” (well, more or less). Which led to the legitimate question “and you could do that in what other country????” Canada, France, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, China, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, England, Germany… oh, you actually think we’re the only developed country in the world? Ok, got it.

I pointed out non-controversial actual-facts, like the fact that women make $0.77 on the dollar to men with equal qualifications and experience, that the Republican House refused to renew the Violence Against Women Act and cut off millions of dollars that are desperately needed to protect women, and that when I was personally sexually harassed while living in Austin, the police refused to help, because we live in a culture that blames women for being the victims of sexual violence.

Of course, to Cloney, that all means that I have “equal opportunity.” I have about a 1 in 3 chance of being a victim of rape or physical violence in my lifetime, so yeah, I guess I’m equal with every other woman in the world on that respect.

I tried explaining the concept of white male privilege, but that’s like asking a rock to recognize that it’s hard.

Then lol, omg the pre-tween txt tlk came out and Cloney decided that facts are no longer facts if you just forget about them.

Grandpa Grammarless was all: “lol, next time you want to know what is wrong with our country,,, look in the mirror... stop being jealous of other peoples hard work and successes and earn it like I did.” Yeah, which part of I’m considerably more successful at 28 than you’ll ever be did you not get? If only Facebook had an imoticon for the diva finger snap. OHNOYOUDI’INT.

When he again reiterated that systematic pay inequality, pervasive cultural double-standards against women, and over 1700 bills introduced so far in 2012 that in some way seek to limit the rights of women were all just ‘me putting limits on myself’ I finally gave up.

And then he suggested I run for Congress. I might just do it, motherfucker, just so I could find a way to get you excommunicated.