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I married no true Scotsman. That always makes me laugh, but yep, an attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion, that’s certainly him. Unreasoned, unreasonable, and also having Scottish ancestors. It’s probably hardwired in his DNA.

I am not complaining by any means, it can be quite charming.  Hubby’s no true Scotsman will go something like this. He will announce  “Real men don’t eat broccoli,” and I will point to all the real men that do, so he will simply declare, “they aren’t real men.” Total fallacy. A bit of rhetorical trickery, having absolutely nothing to do with the facts before him.

For those who don’t know, often when you try to chat with people on the internet you wind up trapped in these odd, irrelevant, and irrational rules of conversation. I have a vague knowledge of debate, some slight understanding of dialectic, rhetoric, logic…but than there is what you encounter on the internet, this odd slang form of conversation that makes people feel so smart, but seems to have no rhyme or reason to it. People start shrieking rather emotionally, strawman! Total strawman! No true Scotsman! Scotsman! Godwin’s law! Somebody call a cop, bad speak here! Speech rules broken! Disregard this entire premise, I call foul, they’re cheating…

Sheesh, I didn’t know one could cheat while having an informal conversation on the internet. A foul is when you elbow someone in the face while they’re trying to shoot a basket. It is not having a major anxiety attack over some rules of speech that you plan to change five seconds from now.

In case I haven’t made it perfectly clear, I am so not impressed with this kind of nonsense. As far as I am concerned your rhetoric and dialectic got so bored with your redundancy, they have now run off with the strawman and you should all just be Godwinned.

The other thing that doesn’t impress me is credentialing. That is when one is making  a statement and trying to lend credence to it by claiming, “I have a degree in philosophy!” I don’t care! I’ll try not to hold it against you, okay? What am I supposed to say here? Your assertion makes no sense and does not hold water, but you think I should accept it because you’ve placed letters after your name?

And lastly, this idea that someone is suppressing your free speech and depriving the rest of the world of the right to hear your brilliant, garbled and redundant opinion. Just a hint here, if you’re hollering all over bloggerville about being silenced and censored…..you’re not being silenced and censored. Just saying.

memes

 

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