Via Matthew Bracken @Matt_Bracken:
I wish this were not true. But it has been true for decades. I remember one of my daughters bringing home a paper from college when she was going to the University of Idaho. I recall it being from a set of papers assigned by an economics professor. The students were to report on the errors they found in them. The paper was about some set of people in South America having freedom forced on them and how bad it was.
How do you argue with someone like this? How can you even have a conversation? We do not even share the definitions of words. Is there even a common basis for communication? Is it some sort of alternate reality?
I fear that at some point the only communication they will understand are hand signals. There are universal hand signals which everyone recognizes and usually comply with. Use them as a last resort.
“Use them as a last resort.”
When things are so bad you cannot have an honest conversation?
It’s fight or flight.
Best advice is what the general in Iraq told his troops; “Be nice, polite, and have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”
And I would add, never get boxed in. Stay out of crowds.
There is a large segment of humankind that would be perfectly happy being a pet.
Someone feeds them, takes them to the doctor, keeps them housed. A little affection from time to time and maybe a walk every so often.
They don’t mind the leash and collar.
In a free market, they are able to find an “owner” and live their dream. Instead of “owner,” they are more frequently called a sugar daddy or sugar mommy.
In the book of Exodus, the freed slaves often complained bitterly, declaring that slavery in Egypt was better than wandering in the desert, thirsty and “starving”. And they longed for their leeks and onions, and their fleshbpots, complaining about having nothing but this mana to eat.
Nothing ever changes.