How Do You Argue with Loons?

In retooling the innards of this blog, I activated an option that sends me an email every time I receive a comment. Prior to that feature being activated, people would leave comments on long-obscure posts and I would only stumble upon them by accident, if at all.

I recently received a response to my “Mormon Communist” post from what looks to be a Christian communist, and I can’t make heads or tails of it. It talks about the Hitterites, who are apparently successful communists, and it slams the Mormons for being “top down” and “bottom up,” much like, I suppose, the early church, which had Peter and Paul constantly telling congregations everything they were doing wrong. When we each are one with Christ and are following His will perfectly, then I think communitarian living will work just great. Until then, it won’t.

This guy then goes on to deny my claim that this free exchange of ideas demonstrates the superiority of the US system to Soviet-style communism, where all dissent is suppressed.

Here’s his response:

Obviously you've never been clubbed or otherwise abused by the government for speaking out against it, peaceably speaking or not, advocating no violence or not. Obviously you are ignoring those in the United States who are calling for more and more curtailment of freedom of political speech, Newt Gingrich for instance being a prime example.

No, I haven’t been clubbed or otherwise abused by the government for speaking out against it. You know what? Neither have you.  Why? Because our government doesn’t club and abuse its citizens for speaking out against it. If it did, don’t you think George W. Bush would have a big baseball bat embedded in Michael Moore’s skull by now?

And Newt Gingrich is the prime example? Say what?

Then we get to the summation:

The U.S. has a long history of suppressing free political speech. It revs up fear and then uses the fabricated boogeyman as an excuse to clamp down on those who would speak out against capitalism for instance when those who speak out begin to convince others with sound reasoning, tight logic, and historically demonstrable and verifiable facts rather than just echoing false propaganda from think tanks funded by the plutocrats (corporatists, world bankers, usurers; the very moneychangers Jesus cleans from the worshipful house of God).

I’m sorry, but this is just loony bin stuff. The US is clamping down on anti-capitalists? Really? Then why don’t they start with Congress, which refuses to let capitalists drill in ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf? Why don’t they throw this global warming malarkey to the four winds in the name of the almighty dollar? Why do they still let Paul Krugman write for the New York Times?

One of the reasons that politics is so depressing is that we don’t seem to be living in the same world anymore. I don’t know where Mr. Hitterite is living, but it sure isn’t the same planet I’m on. How can we “come together” when we’re not even on the same planet?

You can't argue with people who refuse to share a common set of facts. You can only defeat them. Or, if you're John McCain, you can concede that maybe two plus two equals five if it will make you feel better.