House of Eratosthenes

There’s this mythology that persists, that anyone with a political opinion different from the default must “like/love to argue about politics.” It’s conspicuous because in these current times, the default opinion has a lot to do with starting up conflict where it didn’t exist before. So we seem to be systematically confusing people who just want to go about their lives free of unnecessary conflict, with pugnacious Twitter-denizens spoiling for a fight, and vice versa.

I see if you want to get a fight started where there wasn’t one before, but want to look like you’re just a harmless little mammal on the bottom of the food chain just seeking to co-exist with nature, you just portray yourself as either threatened, or feeling threatened. Oh no. I’m worried about hate crimes. You’re using the wrong pronouns on me. Climate change! Such-and-such a bumper sticker could be construed as a call to arms for people to attack me. It’s reached the point where we can’t get away from this kind of talk anymore, and the truth is that this kind of talk is just the sound bullies make when they want to act like non-bullies. For the record, throughout all of human history an important aspect of bullying has been to put up this false imagery that the bully is a non-bully, and the person getting bullied is “the real bully.”

Because of this, the people who can least afford to get immersed in and distracted by politics, end up being the ones who must.

Speaking just for myself, I don’t actually relish political arguments because they tend to lead to me getting scolded. The people who have yet to make a persuasive argument to me, seem to think when all else has failed, it’s time to do some scolding.

As a child of the 1970’s, not conspicuously one of the brighter males in the class, usually the last one to “get” whatever is the thing all the kids are supposed to get…throughout my lifetime I’ve been scolded a lot. It doesn’t quite enmesh the teeth in my cogs. It strips them. I have a tough time picking out the vowels and consonants with scolding. And it doesn’t inspire me to show much respect. Over the years I’ve learned to recognize it as the one tool left in the bag, of someone who didn’t start out with too many others. It’s a clarion call to me that someone is seeking to WinTheArgument at any cost, when they don’t deserve to win it at all.

When I see a mentally handicapped truant Swedish child scolding an international body of delegates and the delegates cheering for the scolding — at them — what I see is a room for mental health patients, filled to capacity plus one. Nobody of sound mind should cheer scolding at them. It tells me all the “civilized” nations of the world are maintaining a habit, without borders, of investing real authority and influence in mental midgets. I don’t know why all these supposedly advanced nations have all slipped off their rockers this way at the same time, and I don’t really care. It’s evidence that I can’t trust what authorities say, because the authorities by default are cuckoo. It really doesn’t help matters that the “facts” being dished out by the young Swedish mental patient are nonsense.

But seriously. If you have so much passion invested in what you’re saying and you don’t think I’m taking it seriously enough, don’t scold. That’s like finding yourself in a hole, and digging some more. That’s just how I work. But I doubt like the dickens I’m the only one. Since the above-mentioned 1970’s, females and effeminate types scolding males and masculine types, without anyone considering it with the gravity it deserves, has settled in as a sort of default configuration. It’s obvious we have a lot of people with loud voices and influence who can’t seem to get enough of it, nevermind whether they get to play the part of the person scolding or the person being scolded. It hasn’t resulted in any pattern of good decision being made. We’ve arrived at a point where it might be a good idea to take an extended break. Leave those little fists un-balled up and off your hips for a few years, ladies and Justin Trudeau, and throttle back on the whole “how dare you” thing. You don’t need to confront all of the time. It doesn’t look to others the way it looks to you.

I don’t think these things because I deserve scolding and haven’t gotten enough. I think these things because I’m normal, sane and of sound mind. I’m capable of dropping one opinion and picking up another if I can hear a rational argument as to why I should, but I don’t respond to scolding from intellectual indigents. That’s the way we all should be.

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Don’t Scold MeSaturday, April 30th, 2022

Don’t Scold Me
Saturday, April 30th, 2022