The virtue of silliness in public debate
This is in response to a posting by a frequent contributor:
http://carsonnow.org/reader-content/07/17/2016/northern-nevada-developme...
which is yet again a perfect illustration of the sad fact that if one can't make a sensible argument, one resorts to distortions, insults and just plain silliness. But then that's all that's left when one does not have the facts on one's side.
"In Mr. White’s recent paranoid screed..."
Why bother to read on, after words like this? It's all downhill from here. Our friend Maurice White did not burden us with a "paranoid screed" (or name-calling); he as a responsible citizen and candidate trying to join a supposedly respectable body of government (a.k.a. the board of supervisors) simply pointed out a wasteful and utterly inappropriate use of the taxpayers' money. But when one does not have the arguments, one engages in silliness:
“I don’t know anything about the NNDA, but I know it’s a “government agency”, and therefore it is bad”
“I don’t know, therefore, I know”
“I don’t know how those Egyptian’s built the Pyramid’s, so they must have been built by space aliens”
Putting nonsense in quotation marks as if they were quotations indeed? That appeals only to those who don't bother to read the article that raised the respondent's hackles (http://carsonnow.org/reader-content/07/11/2016/why-do-we-pay-nnda-100000...). The kids I went to school with gave up arguing like this in 5th grade. It's truly a blessing that the editorial policy of CarsonNow allows people to reveal their true selves to the public.