That’s my take. It’s why I frequent liberal sites. It is important to verbally fight respectfully, with dignity, and never, EVER get mad.
I just keep calling them out on their use of these four weapons:
1. Deflection - they can’t respond so they change the subject. Some are experts at this. The goal is to get you to go off topic and basically “hijack” a thread.
2. Ad-hominem - they either call you names or point out that your sources are partisan, biased or just stupid.
3. Projection - this one is my favorite. They literally accuse you of doing what they are actually doing. It’s really fun to call them out on this, especially when it is actually exposing their thought process in a very unflattering way.
4. Straw-man - rewording your response to mean something you didn’t mean (or only a subset of what you meant), and then attacking that. My typical response is to bring it back by simply saying stuff like, “That is not what I said. What I said is [cut and paste here]. You are using a straw man.
5. Red herring - They bring up something minor or irrelevant to prove you are wrong. It happened to me here today. I posted a comical video that, at one point, said nobody has ever died of a marijuana overdose. He said that is not true. Truth is, there may be two cases in recorded history where someone DID die simply by using marijuana, but two cases in modern history is statistically zero. It is a red herring.
When one realizes this is pretty much the only weapons the left has, it is easy to defend against them. But still, it is offense that changes minds. Defense merely prevents the other side from diminishing the truths stated in the offense.
You are saying liberals are classier than some freepers here? Not sure if i agree, but I have experienced the comments of a lot of catty men on this board. Very unbecoming.