Sometimes grownchildren will try to interject their thoughts at the adults’ dinner table. In the interests of not causing a scene, a guide to using some verbal judo against their simple-minded, unsophisticated arguments.
Here are some highlights… Read it all though. It’s some good, nourishing food for the mind and will make you chuckle.
Thanksgivingmanship: Your Guide to Surviving The Progressive Imbeciles Who Have Spent a Week Cramming on How to Survive You
—Ace
Oxford Don Stephen Potter introduced the world to the principles of Gamesmanship, the way to win at games by resort to cheap ploys which were very close to cheating without being technically cheating. He later expanded his inquiries into the general field of “Lifemanship,” the discipline of embracing life in a dickish and hostile spirit, sabotaging social rivals without quite breaching social etiquette.
Given that the progressive elder-children-yet-not-quite-adults you’ll be encountering this Thanksgiving (who I will henceforth refer to as “grownchildren”) will be armed to the teeth with Vox explainers and Obamacare propaganda, I herewith humbly submit these first sketches of a new branch of Lifemanship I call “Thankgivingmanship,” which I define as the gentle art of insulting the stupid without alerting them to the fact that they’ve been insulted at all.
It is the goal of the dedicated Thanksgivingman, then, to achieve the sublime art of giving offense without offense being taken.
My basic strategy is thus: It would be as rude of you as it is rude of your cretinous grownchildren kin to allow a Thanksgiving dinner into a stupid game of Rachel Maddow Talking Points and their rebuttals.
So, rather than confront the unemployed idiots who will be assailing you, I propose instead to superficially avoid conflict and engagement on their dummy mouthflappings, and appear instead to agree with them.
But — and here is the point — a skilled Thanksgivingman will only appear to agree with the grownchildren to feeble intellects, such as those possessed by the grownchildren themselves. Instead of disagreeing with them — which will cause argument and anger — you will instead claim to agree with them, while in fact contradicting them, subverting them, of baffling them with statements that nearly, but do not quite, make sense.
Our definitions and mission now established, we turn to the first of our three primary Thanksgivingmanship gambits:
The Neutral or Nonsensical Statement Disguised as Agreement.Progressives do not process language the same way human beings do; they chiefly adduce meaning from tone and body language, like dogs.
This means that you can say many things which are either irrelevant, nonsensical, or otherwise not in agreement with the progressive subcreatures you’re temporarily amidst so long as you deliver your words with a warm smile and a lot of nodding.
You may also use uptalk to express an insincere solidarity. As with dogs and babies, progressives find artificially high-pitched vocal tones to be soothing and possibly a prelude to Walkies and Snackies.
Whenever a progressive grownchild says something stupid and ignorant, which will be always, do not engage on the merits. Progressive grownchildren will become highly emotional and agitated at the slightest show of disagreement, and may wet the floor or claw at the furniture.
Instead, say something which is either neutral or nonsensical (which successfully communicates your true beliefs to other real human beings capable of deciphering obvious meaning) while deploying smiling, nodding, and uptalk to falsely convey agreement with to the more-stunted intellect of the grownchild.
For example, if a progressive grownchild says, “Rachel Maddow is just so amazing,” you can respond by nodding and saying “Absolutely, Rachel Maddow is without doubt a mammal.” (Or: “A mammal…?”)
….
“Today’s world is so remarkable! When I was young, we had to read books and derive our own thinking for ourselves. What a time to be alive, when sounding vaguely informed is no longer a luxury of the intellectual, but a cheaply assembled ware available to the common man!”Fake Statistics. It was my old friend Boston Irish who alerted me to this ticklish little trope, when he observed that no matter how absurd the statistic you proposed to a progressive, if that statistic seemed to call attention to whatever bugaboos xhe was excited about, xhe would respond with a gushing “I know, right?!”
He demonstrated this to me at a party by interrupting a couple of liberals talking, and announcing to them:
“You know, based on current statistics, in ten years, the entire state of California will be homeless.”
“Right! I know!” came the response.
…
Fake Quotes. Progressives love fake quotes — they just love dressing up whatever passes for this week’s SJW Conventional Wisdom and attributing it to some historic figure.Generally, these historic figures are very well known, because progressives don’t know any historic figures except the very well known. Thomas Jefferson is always a popular choice. For “bad sounding quotes,” Hitler is preferred. Napoleon and Marcus Aurelius may be deployed as well, but be prepared for some confused looks as to who it is you’re talking about.
…For example:
“Wasn’t it Mahatma Gandhi who said, ‘It is not necessarily the first man to shoot who wins the battle, but it is always the last man shooting who wins the day’?”
“As Gertrude Stein said” — and I should say here that this gambit works best when you pronounce this name, for no particular reason, in an outrageous German accent, as Gaertruude Schteinn.
So, let’s begin again: “As Gaertruude Schteinn observed, ‘The man who is slowest to arm himself is quickest to savor the bounties of Heaven.'”
…A Final Word. ..
For example, if the childanimal you are speaking with declares:
“You’re micro-aggressing me.”
…then be sure to respond,
“Ah, then please sincerely accept my most micro apologies.”
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