So many bullying morons.

Preserving a portion of a response I made to some buddies stuck arguing with numbnuts on facebook:

You have my utmost sympathies. This is exactly like conversations I’ve tried to have here and elsewhere on the net. It soon becomes merely an exercise in banging my head on the wall. What I’d hope would be good conversation becomes sad and dysfunctional. I hope to learn more ideas but it quickly becomes readily apparent the other person(s) in the thread ‘arguing’ with me is incapable of understanding what I’ve written, unable to reason and follow rules of logic, given to ad hominem and strawman arguments, criticizing with gross mischaracterizations and blindness to their own inability to engage intelligently. All that is accompanied 3/4 of the time by their spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors in abundance.

I believe those very faults in those we try to interact reasonably with are, along with greed and selfishness, at the very root of the problems we face in society and with our government today. I know I can’t be right all the time but I know for certain that what is correct is never derived from the ridicule, abusiveness, anger and mocking that you two and I so often encounter in our perhaps futile attempts to reason with those who would choose to call themselves our ‘opposition’.

I am however greatly heartened to read of the growing disregard Americans have for the increasingly minor tea partiers and the growing majority support there is for the occupy movement. Money, fear and anger may repeatedly steal progress from us as a people but I know the only true solutions and betterment will come from people learning to value intelligence, eloquence and reason.