We are not sheep
Eric S. Raymond (esr) relates how he convinced a hoplophobe to consider arming himself, not with reason, but by calling him a sheep, and typing "Baa, baa, baa" in the IRC channel in which they were conversing.
I listened to the others on the channel offer polite, reasoned, factually correct counterarguments to this guy, and get nowhere. And suddenly...suddenly, I understood why. It was because the beliefs the ignoramus was spouting were only surface structure; refuting them one-by-one could do no good without directly confronting the substructure, the emotional underpinnings that made ignoramus unable to consider or evaluate counter-evidence.
The need, here, was to undermine that substructure. And I saw the way to do it. This is what I said:
"You speak, but I hear only the bleating of a sheep. Your fear gives power to your enemies."
Ignoramus typed another sentence of historical ignorance. My reply was "Baa! Baa! Baaaaa!"
And another. My reply was more sheep noises, more deliberate mockery. And you know what? A few rounds of this actually worked. Ignoramus protested that he wasn't a sheep. At which point I asked him "Then why are you disarmed?"
*CRACK*
esr in a comment:
>The metaphor there is obvious. What I'd like to know is why people
>who are for gun control sometimes equate guns with male genitalia?What I find weirder is that, having made that equation, they are up front about wanting to rip the metaphorical genitals off of gun owners, but clearly think that desire makes them better people. Rather than, you know, petty castrating bitches.
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