Wrangling over terminology and nomenclature is a good part of what goes on in the culture wars. For he who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate. What I call semantic rehabilitation is one side of this.
'Gaffe,' for example, has a negative connotation. It refers to to a social or political blunder or misstep, a faux pas, a noticeable and usually embarrassing mistake. A recent example is Gary Johnson's query, "What's Aleppo?" which betrayed his ignorance of the fact that Aleppo is a city in Syria as opposed to, say, one of the Marx brothers. (Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo, Chico . . . Aleppo!)It is perhaps not all that surprising that a Libertarian who favors marijuana legalization and a non-interventionist foreign policy would not know about Aleppo.
Semantic rehabilitation involves taking a word or phrase with a negative connotation and giving it a positive one. This morning I noticed at a couple of lefty sites the following definition of 'gaffe': "a statement that's politically damaging precisely because it's true." The authors were referring to Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" smear.
But of course that is not what 'gaffe' means. Meaning, however, is fluid, tied as it is to use. So if our lefty pals can make their mischief stick, they will have (a) narrowed the meaning of 'gaffe' and (b) given it a positive connotation.
What is the opposite of semantic rehabilitation? Whatever we call it, it is illustrated by the fate of 'checkered past,' which has come to possess a negative connotation as I demonstrate in A Checkered Past.
Martin Castro, an Obama appointee, is chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Here’s Mr. Castro: “The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”
Mr. Castro’s is the prevailing view among progressives. Barack Obama alluded to it when he derided small-town Americans bitterly clinging to guns or religion (i.e., the Second and First Amendments). Ditto for Mrs. Clinton, who in a remark about reproductive rights declared that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” (William McGurn, WSJ, 12 September 2016)
We should thank Mr. Castro for giving us such a clear and concise insight into the mind of the Left.
Hypocrisy
Note first the liberal-left obsession with hypocrisy. Why does it so exercise them if not because of their hatred of religion with its difficult-to-achieve moral demands? ("He who so much as looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart." I quote this hard saying from memory. Too hard, a lefty might say: it drives people to hypocrisy.) They hate the stringent moral demands religion makes and so they attack as hypocrites those who preach them.
To a leftist, preaching can only be 'moralizing' and 'being judgmental.' It can only be the phony posturing of someone who judges others only to elevate himself. The very fact of preaching shows one to be a hypocrite. Of course, leftists have no problem with being judgmental and moralizing about the evil of hypocrisy. When they make moral judgments, however, it is, magically, not hypocritical.
And therein lies the contradiction. They would morally condemn all moral condemnation as hypocritical. But in so doing they condemn themselves as hypocrites.
Coded Speech and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion
To understand the Left you must understand that central to their worldview is the hermeneutics of suspicion which is essentially a diluted amalgam of themes from Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud.
Thus nothing has the plain meaning that it has; every meaning must be deconstructed so as to lay bare its 'real meaning.'
Suppose a conservative says, sincerely, "The most qualified person should get the job." Applying the hermeneutics of suspicion, the leftist takes the conservative to be speaking 'in code': what he is really saying is something like: "People of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race."
Or suppose a conservative refers to a black malefactor as a thug. What he has actually said, according to the hermeneutics of suspicion, is that the malefactor is a nigger. But 'thug' does not mean 'nigger.' 'Thug' means thug. There are thugs of all races.
Leftists often call for 'conversations' about this or that. Thus Eric Holder famously called for a 'conversation' about race. But how can one have a conversation — no sneer quotes — about anything with people who refuse to take what one sincerely says at face value?
One of Trump's signature sayings is "Make America great again!"
To a leftist, this is a 'racist dog whistle.' It doesn't mean what it manifestly means; there is a latent sinister meaning that we can thank Bill Clinton for exposing. It means — wait for it – “That message…America great again is if you’re a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don’t you. What it means is I’ll give you an economy you had 50 years ago and I’ll move you back up on the social totem and other people down.”
The irony is that Slick Willy used the same sentence himself!
Here we come to the nub of the matter. The liberal is a piece of moral scum who refuses to treat his political opponents as rational beings, as persons. He dehumanizes them and treats them as if they are nothing but big balls of such affects as fear and hate bereft of rational justification for the views they hold.
Trump insists that anyone residing in the United States illegally is subject to deportation. Many commentators regard such comments as inflammatory. I am baffled by their outrage. What, exactly, is meant by “illegal” if the lawbreaker is immune from consequences?
I am baffled too. No reasonable person could consider it inflammatory or hateful to enforce just and reasonable laws. Nor could any reasonable person refer to Trump's Phoenix immigration speech as 'hateful,' yet many liberal commentators did exactly that.
On the O'Reilly show recently, a seemingly intelligent liberal referred to a wall such as the one Trump proposes as "hateful." This illustrates what I call the topical insanity of liberals. On some topics they suffer cognitive melt-down. Suppose our liberal pal has security doors installed on his house to protect his wife and children. Would he consider that 'hateful'? Presumably not. But then why can't he see that drug trafficking, human trafficking, and the invasion by criminals and terrorists is something that cannot be tolerated? Why can't he see that the rule of law must be upheld even in the case of the majority of illegal immigrants who simply seek a better life? Why can't he appreciate how precious the rule of law is, and how important a role it plays in making ours a great and prosperous country that half the world wants to come to? What blinds him to the necessity of disease control via border control? What we have here on the part of liberals is either topical insanity or willful stupidity which, because willful, ought to be morally condemned.
[. . .]
The very notion of limiting immigration—building a wall—gets Trump described as “anti-immigrant.” But isn’t job number one for our political leaders to protect the interests of Americans, which surely entails restricting the number of people who can immigrate?
Of course. Note also the verbal obfuscation that contemporary liberals routinely engage in by eliding the obvious distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Trump is not anti-immigrant, he is anti-illegal-immigrant, as we all should be.
[. . .]
Something strange is going on here, something I don’t fully understand.
It may be that Reno does not understand, or want to understand, how destructive and vicious leftists are. I suppose most of us would like to believe that most of our fellow citizens are basically decent people, morally speaking. But the evidence is against it in the case of leftists. Morally decent people, for example, don't slander their opponents. But leftists (and this includes contemporary liberals) routinely slander and disrespect their opponents in lieu of engaging their point of view. For example, if you point out the clear and present danger of radical Islam, they say or imply that you are in the grip of a phobia. Now a phobia is an irrational fear, whereas concern about the threat of radical Islam is eminently rational.
A decent person does not impugn the rationality of his interlocutor by dismissing his arguments unexamined and ascribing to him groundless fears and phobias. A decent person does not behave as Hillary Clinton recently did when she dumped 50% of Trump supporters into a "basket of deplorables."
Liberals like Bill and Hillary Clinton regularly smear their opponents and then issue hypocritical calls for 'civility.' What passes for argument among liberals is the hurling of SIXHRB epithets: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, bigoted. (I borrow the acronym from Dennis Prager) For example, if you oppose illegal immigration then you are a xenophobe; if you carefully argue against Obamacare then you a racist; if you give reasons why marriage is between a man a woman you are dismissed as a bigot. If you oppose that slaughter of innocent human beings which is abortion you are waging war against women and interfering with their 'health' and 'reproductive rights.' If you point out the very real threat of radical Islam, then you are dismissed as an 'Islamophobe' with a mental illness.
How is it possible to resist the conclusion that Hillary and her ilk are moral scum?
[. . .]
A recent essay in Foreign Affairs by Kishore Mahbubani and Lawrence Summers, “The Fusion of Civilizations: The Case for Global Optimism,” outlines a vision for a more globalized, peaceful, and prosperous future—in which nations become less significant. Today’s emphasis on multiculturalism and “diversity” participates in this vision of the future, one in which differences are overcome and borders are irrelevant. It’s species of utopianism, to be sure, but it has a powerful grip on the moral imagination of the West.
In this view, national interest is an impediment to progress. Concerns about identity are, by definition, forms of ethnocentrism bordering on xenophobia. This is why the upsurge of populist concern about immigration . . . are so vigorously denounced by mainstream politicians, journalists, and political commentators.
The above is not only utopian, but incoherent. On the one hand we are told that "diversity" promotes the overcoming of differences and the making irrelevant of borders. But what is "diversity" if not a celebration of differences? An emphasis on "diversity" leads to identity politics which is supposedly what the above authors oppose. There can be no comity without commonality.
Liberals falsely imagine that we are all the same and that we all have the same values. That is manifestly not the case. Most Muslims do not share our Enlightenment values. This is why there can be peace with them only if they stay in their own lands. You may not like borders, but they reflect unbridgeable differences and make peaceful coexistence possible. The conservative, unlike the liberal, has a reality-based, sober understanding of how different and how limited we human beings are.
Alt-rightists call them 'cuckservatives,' but I am no alt-rightist. (I don't believe the cure for a Commie is a Nazi.) So I use 'sneer' quotes.
Professional 'conservatives' are like a lot of professional 'philosophers': they cherish their cushy yap-and-scribble lifestyle whether or not it brings about any personal or social improvement. Wisdom? What's that? (Memo to self: write an entire entry on this.)
“I’ve heard a lot of conservatives voicing frustration, like, ‘How fucking hard is this, Hillary?’” said Ben Howe, a conservative ad-maker and an outspoken Trump detractor. “That’s the only reason I’m panicked these days … I’m losing faith in Hillary’s ability to win this easy-ass election.”
Rick Wilson, a Florida-based GOP consultant now working on Evan McMullin’s independent presidential campaign, said few of his #NeverTrump compatriots believe a case of pneumonia will sink Clinton’s candidacy. But her impulse to conceal the illness — and her campaign’s clumsy response once it was revealed — reinforced a core political weakness.
“There are a lot of Republicans on the ‘Never Trump’ side that are starting to feel very nervous,” Wilson said, “because no matter how minor the next thing is there’s a possibility [the Clinton campaign] is gonna screw it up by lying about something. They can’t help themselves. It’s genetic.”
To all the “conservatives” yammering about my supposed opposition to Constitutional principle (more on that below) and who hate Trump, I say: Trump is mounting the first serious national-political defense of the Constitution in a generation. He may not see himself in those terms. I believe he sees himself as a straightforward patriot who just wants to do what is best for his country and its people. Whatever the case, he is asserting the right of the sovereign people to make their government do what they want it to do, and not do things they don’t want it to do, in the teeth of determined opposition from a managerial class and administrative state that want not merely different policies but above all to perpetuate their own rule.
If the Constitution has any force or meaning, then “We the People” get to decide not merely who gets to run the administrative state—which, whatever the outcome, will always continue on the same path—more fundamentally, we get to decide what policies we want and which we don’t. Apparently, to the whole Left and much of the Right, this stance is immoderate and dangerous. The people who make that charge claim to do so in defense of Constitutional principle. I can’t square that circle. Can you?
Prepared lines come in handy in many of life's situations. They are useful for getting points across in a memorable way and they make for effective on-the-spot rebuttals.
A mind well-stocked with prepared lines is a mind less likely to suffer l'esprit d'escalier.
Suppose a feminist argues that men have no right to an opinion about the morality of abortion. Without a moment's hesitation, retort: Arguments don't have testicles!
Good commentary from Roger Kimball on the Flight 93 piece by Publius Decius Mus.
Kimball now has a more positive view of Trump:
As recently as a few weeks back, I was a lesser-of-two-evils, reluctant Trump supporter: classic Russian roulette vs. the loaded semi-automatic that is a Hillary Clinton victory.
But then Trump embarked on a series of high-profile speeches and rallies. I liked what he said about taxes and economic policy. I liked his list of possible SCOTUS nominees. I liked what he said about supporting the police and the plight of blacks in the inner cities. I liked what he said about combatting Islamic terrorism (what Barack Obama calls “workplace violence”). I even liked most of what he said in hisimmigration speech in Arizona. I thought it was courageous and “presidential” for him to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. I thought he did the right thing in going to lend moral, and even a bit of material, support to the victims of the floods in Louisiana. I was grateful when he released a video commemoratingthe canonization of Mother Teresa. I was happy to see him supporting school choice, standing up for religious freedom, and criticizing those who mock Christians and people of faith.
I know there will be some who object, “But how do you know he will do all things things.” The answer is, I don’t.
But I do know what Hillary would do: Obama on steroids. She’s a known-known. She would, as Publius warns, complete the “fundamental transformation” of this country into a third-world, politically correct socialist redoubt.
There is a fair amount of hysteria among NeverTrumpers about “The Flight 93 Election,” which I guess underscores just how potent its argument is. (The fact that Rush Limbaugh read it aloud on his radio show redoubled that potency.) As I say, I’ve come around to thinking that there are plenty of good reasons for someone of conservative principles to support Trump. I know, and have repeatedly rehearsed, the standard litany of criticisms about Trump. But they fade if not into insignificance then at least into near irrelevance in the face of his actual program (see above) and, most of all, in the face of the horror that is his opponent. I’ll give the last word to Publius: “The election of 2016 is a test . . . of whether there is anyvirtù left in what used to be the core of the American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests, and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it regardless.”
The great James Burnham once remarked that where there is no alternative there is no problem. Fortunately, we do have an alternative, and, my, we do have a problem. I was wrong when I predicted that Donald Trump would not be the candidate. I hope I will be proved wrong about my prediction that, were he the candidate, he would not win. The trends are promising, I think, but it would be foolish to deny that there are madmen in the cockpit or that many of the passengers are scared, apathetic, deluded, or just plain cowardly. We need a real-life Decius Mus who is willing to say “Let’s roll” and make a concerted charge. It may be the last chance we have.
Perhaps you have noticed this too. People will often predict what they want to happen, even when what they want to happen is far from a foregone conclusion. At the moment I am reading an article by David P. Goldman who asserts that Hillary is "road kill":
The presidential election was over the moment the word “deplorable” made its run out of Hillary Clinton’s unguarded mouth. As the whole world now knows, Clinton told a Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender fundraiser Sept. 10, “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.”
What is the astute Goldman up to? He must know the election is not in the bag. A glance at the electoral college map should convince anyone of that. At the moment, Clinton has 209 electoral votes, Trump 154, with 175 toss ups.
My theory is that when intelligent people predict what they want to happen, when what they want to happen is far from a foregone conclusion, they are trying to influence the outcome. If more and more people think that Trump will win, then they will be inclined to support him. People like to be on the winning side. "You just want to be one the side that's winning," Dylan whined in Positively Fourth Street.
There are numerous examples of this phenomenon of predicting what one wants to happen.
A related phenomenon is often exhibited by my angelic wife. I'll ask her how likely it is that such-and-such a good thing will happen, and she will reply, "I hope so!" I will then point out that what I requested was her assessment of the probability of a desired future event, not a report on what she hopes.
'Do you think Socrates Jones will get tenure?"
"I hope so!"
Goldman's ending earns the coveted MavPhilnihil obstat:
He [Trump] built a new country club in Palm Beach two decades ago because the old ones excluded blacks and Jews. He’s no racist. He’s an obnoxious, vulgar salesman who plays politics like a reality show. I’ve made clear that I will vote for him, not because he was my choice in the Republican field (that was Sen. Cruz), but because I believe that rule of law is a precondition for a free society. If the Clintons get a free pass for influence-peddling on the multi-hundred-million-dollar scale and for covering up illegal use of private communications for government documents, the rule of law is a joke in the United States. Even if Trump were a worse president than Clinton–which is probably not the case–I would vote for him, on this ground alone.
In an outstanding NRO piece, William Voegeli has collected some choice specimens of Hillarious blather.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, really did say in an economic-policy speech this year, “I believe in an America always moving toward the future.”
This inanity is not a new problem. Consider the two most important speeches the president and the first lady gave in 1993. In his inaugural address, Bill Clinton said, “Each generation of Americans must define what it means to be an American.” Further, “the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.”
Less than three months later, in a speech ostensibly about health-care policy, Hillary Clinton told a bemused University of Texas audience that “we lack meaning in our individual lives and meaning collectively, we lack a sense that our lives are part of some greater effort, that we are connected to one another.” Her solution exceeded the responsibilities of a president’s spouse, but then it also exceeded the capacities of any public official, private citizen, or national institution: “Let us be willing to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the 20th century, moving into a new millennium.”
The earnest, incoherent moralism that characterized Clintonism at the outset remains its salient feature. In her recent acceptance speech, Hillary Clinton offered “the words of our Methodist faith” that she had learned as a girl: “Do all the good you can, for all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can.”
It’s quite impossible to disagree with this credo, which is both its appeal and its fatal flaw. The hard questions, the moral and practical ones that matter, are about how to do good, not whether. The pious tautology that it’s good to do good but bad to do bad tells us nothing about choosing between goods when there are trade-offs or conflicts, weighing costs against benefits, comparing short-term attainments with long-term risks, or reckoning second-order effects. It’s useless, in other words, for grappling with every problem that makes our moral and political lives so hard.
Contrast this empty verbiage with the detailed policy proposals in Trump's Phoenix immigration speech.
The problem with Hillary, as with Obama, is that they are what I call stealth ideologues. They push a hard-Left agenda but they are too dishonest to own up to it. So they spout empty phrases the better to bamboozle the booboisie.
The following argument is sometimes heard. "Because values are relative, it is wrong to impose one's values on others."
But if values are relative, and among my values is the value of instructing others in the right way to live, then surely I am justified in imposing my values on others. What better justification could I have? If values are relative, then there is simply no objective basis for a critique or rejection of the values I happen to hold. For it to be wrong for me to impose my values, value-imposition would have to be a nonrelative disvalue. But this is precisely what is ruled out by the premise 'values are relative.'
Either values are relative or they are not. If they are relative then no one can be faulted for living in accordance with his values even if among his values is the value of imposing one's values on others. If, on the other hand, values are not relative, then one will be in a position to condemn some forms of value-imposition. The second alternative, however, is not available to one who affirms the relativity of all values.
Persons who give the above argument are trying to have it both ways at once, and in so doing fall into self-contradiction. They want the supposed benefits of believing that values are relative — such supposed benefits as toleration — while at the same time committing themselves to the contradictory proposition that some values are not relative by their condemnation of value-imposition.
One sees from this how difficult it is for relativists to be consistent. A consistent relativist cannot make any such pronouncement as that it is wrong to impose one's values on others; all he can say is that from within his value scheme it is wrong to impose one's values on others. But then he allows the possibility that there are others for whom value-imposition is the right thing to do.
Relativism, whether alethic or axiological, is curiously self-vitiating. To be consistent, the relativist must acquiesce in the relativization of his own position. For example, the value relativist must admit that is only from within his own value scheme that it is wrong to impose one's value on others. To which my response will be: That's nice; but what does that have to do with me? The relativist can get my attention only if he appeals to nonrelative values, value binding on all of us; but if does so, then he contradicts himself.
In the course of our discursive operations we often encounter circularity. Clarity will be served if we distinguish different types of circularity. I count three types. We could label them definitional, argumentative, and explanatory.
A. The life of the mind often includes the framing of definitions. Now one constraint on a good definition is that it not be circular. A circular definition is one in which the term to be defined (the definiendum) or a cognate thereof occurs in the defining term (the definiens). 'A triangle is a plane figure having a triangular shape,' though plainly true, is circular. 'The extension of a term is the set of items to which the term applies' is an example of a non-circular definition.
B. Sometimes we argue. We attempt to support a proposition p by adducing other propositions as reasons for accepting p. Now one constraint on a good argument is that it not be circular. A circular argument in is one in which the conclusion appears among the premises, sometimes nakedly, other times clothed for decency's sake in different verbal dress. Supply your own examples.
C. Sometimes we explain. What is it for an individual x to exist? Suppose you say that for x to exist is for some property to be instantiated. One variation on this theme is to say that for Socrates to exist is for the haecceity property Socrateity to be instantiated. This counts as a metaphysical explanation, and a circular one to boot. For if Socrateity is instantiated, then it is is instantiated by Socrates who must exist to stand in the instantiation relation. The account moves in a circle, an explanatory circle of embarrassingly short diameter.
Suppose someone says that for x to exist is for x to be identical to something or other. They could mean this merely as an equivalence, in which case I have no objection. But if they are shooting for a explanation of existence in terms of identity-with-something-or-other, then they move in an explanatory circle. For if x exists in virtue of its identity with some y, then y must exist, and you have moved in an explanatory circle.
Some philosophers argue that philosophers ought not be in the business of explanation. I beg to differ. But that is a large metaphilosophical topic unto itself.
The morning of 9/11 was a beautiful, dry Arizona morning. Back from a hard run, I flipped on the TV while doing some cool-down exercises only to see one of the planes crash into one of the towers. I knew right away what was going on.
I said to my wife, "Well, two good things will come of this: Gary Condit will be out of the news forever, and finally something will be done about our porous southern border."
I was right about the first, but not about the second.
Do you remember Gary Condit, the California congressmann? Succumbing as so many do to the fire down below, Condit initiated an extramarital affair with the federal intern, Chandra Levy. When Levy was found murdered, Condit's link to Levy proved his undoing. The cable shows were awash with the Condit-Levy affair that summer of 2001. 9/11 put an end to the soap opera.
But it didn't do much for the security of the southern border.
We have one last chance,and his name is Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton we now know to be a liar beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt. A liar is one who habitually makes false statements with the intention of deceiving her audience. This definition, however, presupposes the distinction between true and false statements. Aphoristically: no truth, no lies. Hillary cannot be a liar unless there is truth. But maybe there is no truth, only narratives. Here, perhaps, is a way to defend Hillary. Perhaps the outrageous things she says are merely parts of her narrative. So consider:
N. There is no truth; there are only narratives.
It follows that (N) itself is only a narrative, or part of one. For if there is no truth, then (N) cannot be true. Is this a problem? I should think so. Suppose you want to persuade me to accept (N). How will you proceed? You can't say I ought to accept (N) because it is true. Will you say that I ought to accept (N) because it is 'empowering'? But it cannot BE empowering unless it is TRUE that it is empowering. You cannot, however, invoke truth on pain of falling into inconsistency. No matter which predicate you substitute for 'empowering,' you will face the same difficulty. If you recommend (N) on the ground that it is F, then you must say that (N) IS F, which leads right back to truth.
Being and truth are systematically connected. The truth is the truth about what IS, and what IS is at least possibly such as to be the subject matter of truths. (A classical theist can go whole hog here and say: necessarily, whatever IS is the subject matter of truths, and every truth is about something that IS. But I am not assuming classical theism in this entry.)
So you can't say that (N) is empowering or conducive to winning the election or whatever; all you can say is that it is part of your narrative that (N) is empowering, or conducive . . . . In this way you box yourself in: there is nothing you say that can BE the case; everything is a narrative or part of a narrative. But you cannot even say that. You cannot say that everything you say IS a narrative, only that it is part of your narrative that everything you say is a narrative. You are sinking into some seriously deep crapola in your attempt to defend the indefensible, Hillary.
It follows from this that you cannot budge your sane opponent who holds that there is truth and that some narratives are true and others are false. I am one of these sane people. You cannot budge me because, according to MY narrative, there is truth and not all narratives are true. According to my narrative, my narrative is not just a narrative. It answers to a higher power, Truth. The only way you could budge me from my position is by appealing to truth transcendent of narrative. And that you cannot do.
So what is a poor leftist to do? Fall into inconsistency, which is in fact what they do. Everything is a mere narrative except when it suits them to appeal to what is the case.
It is of the essence of the contemporary Left to attempt the replacement of truth by narrative, a replacement they cannot pull off without inconsistency.
What if the lefty embraces inconsistency? Then, while resisting the temptation to release the safety on your 1911, you walk away, as from a block of wood. You can't argue with a block of wood or a shithead. While shit has form, it lacks form supportive of rational discourse.
