Bernardo Verda
Jul 30, 2017 · 2 min read

And of course, you are never mistaken. You “know” some “facts” and thus are obviously more of an expert than those with actual personal knowledge, or actual personal experience — let alone those academics and specialists actually conduct formal studies and publish formal, peer reviewed papers on the topic. You could never have your facts wrong, or insufficient facts, or misinterpreted or out of context, and those facts could never change upon closer examination.

Anyone who presents an informed opinion contradicting your expressed opinion must, at best, just be engaging in a ludicrous degree of absolutely tendentious and pointless hair-splitting (or, in your own choice of words “mierenneukers. Ant fuckers.”).

Nor does it hurt that you, yourself, have the unique privilege of asserting your own casual definitions as authoritative and definitive… for just one example, you are *personally entitled* to define what “culture” is, to determine what does or doesn’t count as “culture”, to decide what does or doesn’t “measure up” as “culture”, invent the official rules about how long a culture has to exist before it qualifies as an actual culture, how a culture can form and what sources a culture can spring from, how a culture can express itself, or even how many people must be involved before their culture can be considered a genuine culture…

Or perhaps you are confusing your own casual, incomplete acquaintance, and your casual assumptions, and your unconscious prejudices, with actual knowledge and understanding.

No — that couldn’t possibly be! Never. You’re too smart, too knowledgeable, too clear-sighted and objective (and simply too savvy) for *that* to be possible! All those linguists, all those sociologists, those historians… they must all simply be utterly deluded. Those advanced degrees in Esperanto Studies must be mail-order counterfeits, not actual, full degrees from recognized and respected institutions. And those Literature degrees, and Sociology degrees, and History degrees, granted for Esperanto-related theses, those must be bogus as well. And of a certainty no Esperanto author could ever have been a serious contender for the Nobel Prize in literature….

So you’re *obviously* in the right, here. You’re so clearly that much better informed, so much more objective, and likely just that much smarter, than all those fuzzy-minded fools and credulous hobbyists who take Esperanto seriously.

Gosh! Gee! Huh! Do you think that maybe (just maybe) *I’m* being a little sarcastic? I can’t imagine why I would be.