Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’m old enough that having amateur debaters attempt to play their tricks on me has become tiresome.  In a recent on-line exchange, my opponent said “I can see you have a lot of anger on this issue.  You need help.”  Nice try, but no cigar.  I know that trick and it no longer works on me.

 Accusing me of being angry is a rhetorical device intended to disqualify my opinion by implying that I’m not rational, I’m hysterical.  It’s also intended to thereby divert attention from the hollowness of my opponent’s intellectual position and therefore acts as an admission that her position IS hollow since, if my opponent had a worthwhile argument to make, she’d have made it; the fact she didn’t make one is compelling evidence she had none to make.

 My response was along the lines of: “Don’t snivel.  It’s not seemly to sit there bawling when you’ve been bested.  Stiff upper lip!  Oh, you weren’t crying?  Of course not, no more than I was angry, so let’s both can drop the posturing.  Talk sense if you have it; if not, shut up.”

 Didn’t want that person as a “friend” anyway.

 Joe Doakes

“People who believe as you do are often compensating for something, ifyaknowhatImean.”

“Yes,  We’re compensating for the fact that there are a lot of stupid, evil people in the world.  Oh, as to the blue reference, you “know what I mean” in only the most abstract possible sense, ifyaknowwhatImean.