Over July 4th I went to visit family and argued with some chuds. The conversation turned to the Civil War and lost cause nonsense. Somebody had brought up the treatment of slaves and democracy in the context of Lincoln being a tyrant. I then had the brilliant idea that the freed slaves should have been allowed to vote on what to do with their former owners.

I kept bringing up that this would be the most democratic and American thing to do and that only the bad slave owners would be killed. I just kept repeating that all the good masters who treated their slaves well would have their slaves vote to keep things as they are. The strange thing is, the guys who were talking about how well southerners treated their slaves didn't say that the former slaves would have voted to keep things as they were. Even past all their ideology they realized that that just wasn't something that would happen.

I didn't bring up that I was inspired by Mao.

  • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.