Policies, a person must have policies. By this, I mean that there need to be certain practical guidelines that help us order our days. We need to have certain things pre-decided, things that help us know how to spend our scarce time, what things to get involved in, and what things to simply ignore. No one has time for everything, right? Therefore, the wise person makes up his or her mind what will receive their attention and what will be left alone.

I have policies. One of those policies is that I do not interact with anonymous trolls online. This results in me having a largely stress-free time on social media, which is pretty rare and extremely pleasant. I do this because I detest cowardice above all else in life, and nothing, absolutely nothing is more cowardly than the person who builds a fake profile behind which to hide as he lobs bombs at others.

And yet, sometimes an anonymous troll is such a picture-perfect representative of a larger phenomenon that said policy must be ignored in the name of instruction. Simply put, sometimes there is a lot that one can teach by showing the spewings of the anonymous coward, things that can warn others away from their stupidity and hatefulness.

I recently had a Twitter exchange with one such individual, “Zoot.” Zoot is an interesting sort. While I believe he is clearly an adult based on internal evidence on his postings, his entire profile is kiddie anime, and his life seems to consist wholly of video games. He appears to be the epitome of the twenty-something, live-in-mommy’s-basement, never had a real job American Leftist.

Our exchange began when I commented on a news story claiming that Joe Biden “Did things by the book” in regard to his classified document scandal.

Zoot was quick to respond:

Notice that his argument was, in essence, “Somebody on his side said it was by the book, so that is proof it is by the book!”

So I gave him a few actual facts to consider:

Now, please note my words and my tone. Everything is polite, pleasant, and to the point, as it should be. But it is at that point that Zoot began to demonstrate Leftism 101:

How did Zoot respond to the facts I presented him? “LOLOLOL Loser.” Then he simply argued that he was right because he was right. In logical terms, he committed two fallacies in one tweet, the argumentum ad hominem and begging the question. The argumentum ad hominem (usually shortened to “ad hominem attack”) is when you attack a person rather than an argument. It is what leftists instinctively do when they are pushed on an issue, and Zoot made ample usage of this throughout our exchange. Begging the question is when an argument’s premises assume the truth of the conclusion instead of supporting it. In simpler terms, “I said it, so I must be right.”

If you want perhaps the most famous example of this in history, you need look no further than the trial of Christ. He was brought before Pilate, who naturally asked why they had brought him, and what did they think he was guilty of. Here was their answer:

John 18:30 They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee.

In other words, “What do you mean, what is he guilty of? If he weren’t guilty, we wouldn’t have brought Him! But we brought him, so of course He is guilty!”

I used just a few short words to point out to Zoot what he had done just in that ad hominem attack alone:

At which point, he doubled down on both fallacies all over again:

Notice how the begging the question fallacy went in that tweet. We have been debating a political issue, and he now asserts that my argument is equivalent to 2+2=7, while his is 2+2=4. In other words, again, “I am right because I say so, and you are wrong because I say so, moron (ad hominem attack yet again).

This is pretty standard for the political left. You must understand that they hate, HATE being challenged on anything. This is the safe space, words are actual violence, therapeutic chalk session, shout down any opposing viewpoints in the name of “tolerance” crowd.

I determined to maintain the high road with Zoot:

At that point, as you might suspect, the ad hominem attacks just kept rolling in. From long experience, I can tell you that once they start with the name-calling, they absolutely do not stop. They are the barely grown-up versions of the children on the playground who settled every argument with some form of the word “poop” hurled at their opponent:

Hey friends (and even enemies) from South Carolina, did you catch that? You are a bunch of ignorant rubes, probably inbred, and definitely imbecile. With a few strokes of the well-exercised, video game-playing thumbs, Zoot the Leftist threw 5.2 million people under the short bus and hit them with every wheel. But those of you who know me also know that, in his haste to be clever and snarky and bigoted, he made a different error as well, one that I pointed out to him forthwith:

Zoot the Leftist, though, was not worried about that latest factual error at all. He simply grabbed a much bigger brush:

Did you think you had escaped the ire of Zoot the Leftist, North Carolinians? Nope. All 10.6 Million of you are equally brain-dead to the guy who gets all of his wisdom from brightly colored two-dimensional characters.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the type of person leftist academia, leftist entertainment, leftist churches, leftist government, and leftist tech is producing. We are raising a generation with no critical thinking skills whatsoever and the thinnest skin in the history of humanity. And all the while, these people who generally cannot grow food or build buildings or repair machines, or even function on their own are being coddled and told that they are the most wonderful people in history because they “feel things and have good intentions.” These sad souls will never fight to defend our land because they believe all of it except a few blue counties are “flyover country” and worthy of being cast into the depths of the sea. They will never stand against tyranny in government or anywhere else because, like the creatures in Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” they are easily manipulated into believing that tyranny is actually for their good. They will go so far as to mistake freedom for tyranny, in fact, and violently scream against it.

And all the while, they will smugly believe that you are the actual idiots in the equation.

Pastor Bo Wagner can be reached by email at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org, and his books are available by clicking the “Store” link above.

Feature photo by Pastor Bo Wagner