Ron Collins
Aug 9, 2017 · 1 min read

To have constructive debates on any of this, we ought to be conscious of the near inevitability that the resultant and very thick cultural fog will somewhat cloud our ideas.

Brilliantly stated, the whole thing.

That makes now three of us, who have decoded the REAL human condition. I think we need to make you an honorary guest-in-residence of the Ron and Lana Panel. Its common theme has always been “we agree more than we think we do, so let’s have a look at how that works, by disagreeing over damn near everything….”

There is a persistent malaise in current dialogue, as old as the hills but one which the internet atmosphere has magnified into its own assumptive dialectic. I call it “the SWYSI attack.”

So, what you’re SAYING, is…….

In the schoolyard or in the marital spat, this is called “don’t put words in my mouth”, and has been an essential core component of etiquette for millennia. It is presumptuous, arrogant, and weak, to do so.

And everybody’s doing it, like the god-damn Hula-hoop…

And, Lana and I do this to each other all the time.

So we argue, and she block-quotes, and I paraphrase and re-direct, and we both obfuscate and cite and counter-cite and tango around shamelessly, until at some point one of us isolates a point and says,

“that’s what I was saying, all along….”

And then start the next round……

    Ron Collins

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    Facts don’t care about your faction