Steve Benen comments on the Washington Monthly blog:
Long-time regulars may know I have quite a few “conversation enders.” These are comments that lead you to know, the moment you hear them, that the writer/speaker is either clueless or intellectually dishonest, and there’s really no reason to engage the person in a serious dialog.
He goes on to cite a few examples:
- “Tax cuts are fiscally responsible because they pay for themselves”
- “Evolution is just a theory”
- “Global warming can’t be real because it’s cold outside”
I too have learned, over the years, to disengage when I hear certain code phrases or words. I quit listening to, quit trying to reason with, and quietly move away from, the person saying them. I always called them “eye rollers,” but they’re the same thing as Benen’s “conversation enders.”
Some of my own eye rollers:
- Calling health care “ObamaCare”
- Describing anything as “socialistic”
- Any time a non-scientist cites disagreement within the scientific community to prove or disprove anything
- Any mention of the complexity of eyeballs in discussions about nature
- Any mention of the media’s “liberal bias”
- Any mention of “welfare queens”
- Calling the inheritance tax a “death tax”
- Saying Bush & Cheney “kept us safe”
- “You people”
- Saying the left treated Bush the same way the right is treating Obama today
- Any argument based on the premise that two wrongs make a right (torturing Muslims is okay, it’s okay to shoplift from evil corporations, etc)
- Blaming economic woes on unions
And the eye roller of all time? “Some of my best friends are black.”
I have a feeling I’ll be revisiting this topic from time to time; hence the “Part I” in the title.