Fugato

I just MSNed this link to a friend of mine for fun, calling it “a little mental masturbation for you.”

For some time now I’ve avoided mentioning anything political to him, because, although I agree with his views on economics to some extent (more through emotion than knowledge or understanding of economics, I’m the first to admit), I am disheartened by the nature of his discourse on the subject. I am not interested in loud-mouthed, arrogant, poorly argued trash talk, and I am saddened to see a good friend devalue his commentary that way. But I sent this just for laughs, calling it “mental masturbation” just to tease him a little about his zealotry.

I got some zealotry back, including this:

“… enda fólk sem aðhyllist sósíalisma mental fucked ups, general loosers, people who don’t want to work, plain evil, or naive and/or stupid”

(the first five words are Icelandic for “and after all¹ people who adhere to socialism are …”)

He said “sorry, that’s the way it is, one labels people as childish, i.e. if one does not want to hurt them more than need be.”

I told him I labelled people who said this kind of thing as childish, and added that I had considered him childish for a long time because of the simplistic, arrogant ways in which he expresses his right-wing tunnel vision.

[Mind you, he is far-right-wing only in the original economics sense, not in the often-used sense of hating/fearing homosexuals or foreigners or Jews or non-Christians, or wanting slavery back, or whatever. He is not a racist; he will not judge you for the color of your skin, although he might want to guillotine you for the color of your views ;-) ]

He responded with “well, that’s your problem” and then added that that was rather childish of me (with a ;-) smirkey), and that the difference between my comment about him and his comment about socialists was not a fundamental difference, just a nuance.

I’m considering that last statement. Is the difference a minor one? Am I guilty of the same baseless oversimplification and arrogance? The same closed-mindedness?

Or should I just not even waste time considering the statement, since it came from someone whose commentary I’ve already dismissed as childish? ;-)

Now, that would make me guilty of closed-mindedness.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 26th, 2005 at 10:04 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.